The Crusades

 The Crusades

The Crusades were several closely tied wars that were commenced, supported, and even sometimes participated and directed by the Latin Church during the medieval times. The best known Crusades nowadays happened between 1095 and 1291 CE. They were trying to reclaim the Holy Land, or Constantinople and Jerusalem and the surrounding areas from its Arabian Islamic capturers, who also considered it to be their holy land. This event led to the First Crusade, in which the Holy Roman Empire fought and recovered the Holy Land, and soon after, dozens of Crusades were fought, which acted as one of the biggest centers of attention for multiple centuries in Europe.

In 1095, Pope Urban the 2nd announced the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, a gathering held by the former. He encouraged and showed military support for the Byzantine Empire and its emperor Alexios the 1st against the Seljuk Turks. They later declared for an armed pilgrimage to the Holy Land against the Islamic. This event received lots of support and enthusiasm from all social groups of Western Europe.

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Facts:

The riches acquired from Christopher Columbus’ expeditions were also used to finance another crusade.

The first Crusade was the only successful one for the Christians.

The fourth Crusade was the cause of why there are strong separations between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

That same crusade was also the cause of the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

There was also a crusade called the Childrens’ Crusade, of 30,000 young adults that took the Crusaders’ vow, but it was an utter failure. None of them made it back as they were either killed or sold for slavery.

There were nine major crusades, and then there were dozens of other crusades.

At first, many of the crusaders were non-Christians from Venice. The Pope at the time was supposed to fund them for their help, but didn’t. This led to the Crusaders plundering several Christian cities for money.

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 The first crusaders were loners who did it for several reasons, including religious salvation, satisfying feudal obligations, opportunities for renown, and economic or political advantage. Later Crusades were carried out by organized armies and sometimes even led by kings. All of them were blessed by the Pope, and the original Crusades established four Crusader states: the County of Edessa; the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the County of Tripoli. The Crusader presence remained in the region in some form until the fall of Acre, which was a tactical Islamic fort against them, in 1291. After this, there were no further crusades to recover the Holy Land.

Later into history, constantly occurring military activity between the Islamic Iberian Peninsula and pagan West Slav, Baltic, and Finic people have also been called crusades, or the ‘Northern Crusades’, which was long after the originals. However, they can be called crusades because they had the main approval of the Roman Catholic Church. They were also done in similar ways, such similar rhetoric, symbolism, and banners, which were used in the campaigns towards the Middle East. There were also other crusades that were fought by Christians against other sections of Christianity that believed in fake hearsay.