The Crusades

After the death of Charlemagne in 814 and the eventual collapse of his empire, Europe was under attack and on the defensive. Nomadic people from Asia pillaged eastern and central Europe until the 10th century. Beginning about 800, several centuries of Viking raids disrupted life in northern Europe and even threatened Mediterranean cities. But the greatest threat came from the forces of Islam. Eventually these threats became real.

A crusade is characterized as any of the military expeditions undertaken by Christian powers in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to win the Holy Land from Muslims. The First Crusade played a vital role in Late Antiquity (Middle Ages) Europe; consequently, setting the stage for future events in European history and the preface for the Crusades to follow. The reason for the initiation of the First Crusade, how it was fought and who were involved, notable battles and generals, and how upon its finale it reshaped the Byzantine Empire. The conquest to pursue war against Sejul Turks, who were Sunni Muslims, began when Crusaders realized the Jerusalem had not been under Christian control in 461 years. This was shocking because Christianity has spread throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in Late Antiquity.

War and Military conquest was also apart of the society during this point in the High Middle Ages. Military conquest was important because it rewarded the individual with wealth and power. On the other hand the society was also a Christian one, and therefore the people that went to war had to come to grip with what they were doing. In closing, despite the Church’s attempt to have full control over the rulers of Western Europe, it was impossible to do so. Therefore, the Church came up with the concept of chivalry, which was an attempt to reconcile war and peace.

Although the Crusades were such a violent period of time, they had a positive impact in history because of their role in the renaissance and exposing the Western world to the Eastern. The Crusades were an outlet for the intense religious tension between the Muslims and the church which rose up in the late 11th century. This all started because the church and the Catholics wanted the Holy Lands back from the Muslims. Around this time the church was the biggest institute and people were god-fearing. Pope Gregory VII wanted to control more lands and wanted to get back the lands that they had lost to the Muslims (Medieval Europe).

Alexius Compenus was a new ruler that came into power in Byzantium in 1081. Constentinople was in danger because the Seljuks threatened them, so Alexius first called for help to Pope Urban ll who presented a ten-day meeting telling people about Alexius's problem and that they needed to go to war with the Turks, which led to the first Crusade. The Crusades were organized mostly to recover or defend territories that Christians strongly beleived belonged to them by right, such as "The Holy Land." Palestine lay along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea, and Muslims had taken control of it from the Christians. In the first Crusade, Christians recaptured Palestine, but in the later Crusades, they fought to protect Palestine or recover parts of it that had been lost to Muslim forces.

Taking Back the Holy Land, Religiously or for the Sword The Crusades have been a heated and debated topic for centuries. The main reason the crusades started was because of religious factors and the promise of indulgences by going to the Holy Land and defending all of Christendom from the infidels (p. 102). This brings us to a second point which is, the personal gain for Christians in the East and an expansion of economic and territory to the East (p. 111). Christians wanted to take back the Holy Land from the Moslems and reclaim it for Christendom. The crusades affected Christian Medieval Europe on every fiber, but were the Christians crusades motivated by religious factors or by bloodlust and plunder?

Today many believe the crusades were a war between Islam and Christianity. That religion was the main cause and only cause of this event. They are right in thinking this, for religion was a cause, but it was not the only cause but one of many factors. Three causes that lead up to the Crusades were Europe’s changing medieval society, the desire to protect Christendom and greed. The first cause of the crusades was the shift in Medieval European society.

They all thought of this afterlife as a reality rather than an idea. It was this belief which would help Pope Urban II recruit more men. The aristocracy of the period also led a very violent lifestyle: this crusade or ‘Holy War’ justified the use of violence as a means of abolishing the threat from Islam on the Christian World. Thirdly, the papacy was very keen on consolidating its political influence in Italy, France and Germany. The papacy wanted to keep the Christian parts of the world as large as possible and they also wanted to make sure that these areas would be completely Christian.

Originally the English, who colonized alongside the French, saw settlements in the New World as strictly trading posts, but they soon realized the valuable opportunities that lay in the virgin lands of America, such as cotton, tobacco, and several other agricultural products that could not be found anywhere else. Many of England’s problems could be solved in America, and so colonization began. When the earliest settlers came, England had the responsibility to continue the Protestant Church, and prevent the Catholic Church from converting the entire Native American population of North America (Morison, p.105) A potential Protestant refuge could be based there in the threat of civil wars or a change of religion.

This discord between the Muslim Spanish and Catholic Germans who both desired Spain caused the Battle of Tours in 732 AD. Friction with the Visigoths and Muslims created racism, ignited by the Reconquista. The Reconquista was an eight-hundred year war Spain became involved in from 711-1492 AD. As the Spanish Arabs’ culture became more advanced than the Visigoths’, the Visigoths ... ... middle of paper ... ...rs. In conclusion, the Spanish and English’s actions in America were determined by their origins, the history and society of country they immigrated from; while the French’s course of action in Canada was impacted by the environment they experienced in the New World.