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The
Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a
religious character waged by much of
Christian Europe against external and internal threats; there was also rioting. Crusades were fought mainly against
Muslims, though campaigns were also directed against
pagan Slavs,
Jews,
Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians,
Mongols,
Cathars,
Hussites, and political enemies of the
popes.
The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing
Jerusalem and the
Holy Land from
Muslim rule and were originally launched in response to a call from the
Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim
Seljuk Turks into
Anatolia. The term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent campaigns conducted through to the 16th century in territories outside
the Levant usually against
pagans,
heretics, and peoples under the ban of
excommunication Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers led also to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the
Sultanate of Rum during the
Fifth Crusade.
The Crusades had far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts, some of which have lasted into contemporary times. Because of internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions were diverted from their original aim, such as the
Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the sack of Christian
Constantinople and the partition of the Byzantine Empire between
Venice and the Crusaders. The
Sixth Crusade was the first crusade to set sail without the official blessing of the Pope, establishing the precedent that rulers other than the Pope could initiate a crusade. The
Seventh,
Eighth and
Ninth Crusades resulted in
Mamluk and
Hafsid victories, as the
Ninth Crusade marked the end of the Crusades in the
Middle East.
Historical context
Middle Eastern situation
The Muslim presence in the Holy Land began with the initial
Arab conquest of
Palestine in the 7th century. This didn't interfere much with
pilgrimage to Christian holy sites or the security of monasteries and Christian communities in the Holy Land, and western Europeans were less concerned with the loss of far-away Jerusalem than, in the ensuing decades and centuries, the
invasions of Europe by Muslims and other hostile non-Christians, such as the
Vikings,
Slavs and
Magyars (some of which later became Christians). However, the Muslim armies' successes put increasing pressure on the
Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire.
Another factor that contributed to the change in Western attitudes towards the East came in the year 1009, when the
Fatimid Caliph
al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the destruction of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1039 his successor, after requiring large sums be paid for the right, permitted the Byzantine Empire to rebuild it. Pilgrimages were allowed to the Holy Lands before and after the Sepulchre was rebuilt, but for a time pilgrims were captured and some of the clergy were killed. The Muslim conquerors eventually realized that the wealth of Jerusalem came from the pilgrims; with this realization the persecution of pilgrims stopped. However, the damage was already done, and the violence of the Seljuk Turks became part of the concern that spread the passion for the Crusades.
Western European situation
The origins of the Crusades lie in developments in
Western Europe earlier in the
Middle Ages, as well as the deteriorating situation of the
Byzantine Empire in the east caused by a new wave of Turkish Muslim attacks. The breakdown of the
Carolingian Empire in the late 9
th century, combined with the relative stabilization of local European borders after the Christianization of the
Vikings,
Slavs, and
Magyars, had produced a large class of armed warriors whose energies were misplaced fighting one another and terrorizing the local populace. The Church tried to stem this violence with the
Peace and Truce of God movements, which was somewhat successful, but trained warriors always sought an outlet for their skills, and opportunities for territorial expansion were becoming less attractive for large segments of the nobility. One exception was the
Reconquista in
Spain and
Portugal, which at times occupied Iberian
knights and some
mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe in the fight against the Islamic
Moors, who had successfully overrun most of the
Iberian Peninsula over the preceding two centuries.
In 1063,
Pope Alexander II had given his blessing to Iberian Christians in their wars against the Muslims, granting both a papal standard (the
vexillum sancti Petri) and an
indulgence to those who were killed in battle. Pleas from the Byzantine Emperors, now threatened by the
Seljuks, thus fell on ready ears. These occurred in 1074, from Emperor
Michael VII to
Pope Gregory VII and in 1095, from Emperor
Alexios I Komnenos to
Pope Urban II. One source identifies Michael VII in Chinese records as a ruler of Byzantium (Fulin) who sent an envoy to
Song Dynasty China in 1081. A Chinese scholar suggests that this and further Byzantine envoys in 1091 were pleas for China to aid in the fight against the Turks.
The Crusades were, in part, an outlet for an intense religious piety which rose up in the late 11th century among the lay public. A crusader would, after pronouncing a solemn vow, receive a cross from the hands of the pope or his
legates, and was thenceforth considered a "soldier of the Church". This was partly because of the
Investiture Controversy, which had started around 1075 and was still on-going during the First Crusade. As both sides of the Investiture Controversy tried to marshal public opinion in their favor, people became personally engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. The result was an awakening of intense Christian piety and public interest in religious affairs. This was further strengthened by religious propaganda, advocating
Just War in order to retake the Holy Land—which included Jerusalem (where the
death,
resurrection and
ascension into
heaven of
Jesus took place according to Christian theology) and
Antioch (the first Christian city)—from the Muslims. Further, the remission of sin was a driving factor. This provided any God-fearing man who had committed sins with an irresistible way out of eternal damnation in
Hell. It was a hotly debated issue throughout the Crusades as what exactly "remission of sin" meant. Most believed that by retaking Jerusalem they'd go straight to heaven after death. However, much controversy surrounds exactly what was promised by the popes of the time. One theory was that one had to die fighting for Jerusalem for the remission to apply, which would hew more closely to what
Pope Urban II said in his speeches. This meant that if the crusaders were successful, and retook Jerusalem, the survivors wouldn't be given remission. Another theory was that if one reached Jerusalem, one would be relieved of the sins one had committed before the Crusade. Therefore one could still be sentenced to
Hell for sins committed afterwards.
All of these factors were manifested in the overwhelming popular support for the First Crusade and the religious vitality of the 12
th century.
Immediate cause
The immediate cause of the First Crusade was the Byzantine emperor
Alexios I's appeal to
Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. In 1071, at the
Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire was defeated, which led to the loss of all of Asia Minor (modern
Turkey) save the coastlands. Although attempts at reconciliation after the
East-West Schism between the Catholic Western Church and the
Eastern Orthodox Church had failed, Alexius I hoped for a positive response from Urban II and got it, although it turned out to be more expansive and less helpful than he'd expected.
When the First Crusade was preached in 1095, the Christian princes of northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of
Galicia and
Asturias, the
Basque Country and
Navarre, with increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of Moorish
Toledo to the
Kingdom of León in 1085 was a major victory, but the turning points of the
Reconquista still lay in the future. The disunity of Muslim emirs was an essential factor.
While the
Reconquista was the most prominent example of European reactions against Muslim conquests, it isn't the only such example. The
Norman adventurer
Robert Guiscard had conquered the "toe of Italy," Calabria, in 1057 and was holding what had traditionally been Byzantine territory against the Muslims of
Sicily. The maritime states of
Pisa,
Genoa and
Catalonia were all actively fighting Islamic strongholds in
Majorca and
Sardinia, freeing the coasts of Italy and Catalonia from Muslim raids. Much earlier, the Christian homelands of
Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine,
Egypt, and so on had been conquered by Muslim armies. This long history of losing territories to a religious enemy created a powerful motive to respond to Byzantine Emperor Alexius I's call for holy war to defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands starting with Jerusalem.
The papacy of
Pope Gregory VII had struggled with reservations about the doctrinal validity of a holy war and the shedding of blood for the Lord and had, with difficulty, resolved the question in favour of justified violence. More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land were being persecuted. Saint
Augustine of Hippo, Gregory's intellectual model, had justified the use of force in the service of Christ in
The City of God, and a Christian "
just war" might enhance the wider standing of an aggressively ambitious leader of Europe, as Gregory saw himself. The northerners would be cemented to
Rome, and their troublesome knights could see the only kind of action that suited them. Previous attempts by the church to stem such violence, such as the concept of the "Peace of God", were not as successful as hoped. To the south of Rome, Normans were showing how such energies might be unleashed against both Arabs (in Sicily) and Byzantines (on the mainland). A Latin hegemony in the
Levant would provide leverage in resolving the Papacy's claims of supremacy over the
Patriarch of Constantinople, which had resulted in the
Great Schism of 1054, a rift that might yet be resolved through the force of Frankish arms.
In the Byzantine homelands, the Eastern Emperor's weakness was revealed by the disastrous defeat at the
Battle of Manzikert in 1071, which reduced the Empire's Asian territory to a region in western Anatolia and around
Constantinople. A sure sign of Byzantine desperation was the appeal of
Alexios I to his enemy, the Pope, for aid. But Gregory was occupied with the
Investiture Controversy and couldn't call on the German emperor, so a crusade never took shape.
For Gregory's more moderate successor,
Pope Urban II, a crusade would serve to reunite Christendom, bolster the Papacy, and perhaps bring the East under his control. The disaffected Germans and the Normans were not to be counted on, but the heart and backbone of a crusade could be found in Urban's own homeland among the northern French.
After the First Crusade
On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious Christian fury that was expressed in the massacres of
Jews that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of "
schismatic" Orthodox Christians of the east. During many of the attacks on Jews, local Bishops and Christians made attempts to protect Jews from the mobs that were passing through. Jews were often offered sanctuary in churches and other Christian buildings.
In the 13th century, Crusades never expressed such a popular fever, and after
Acre fell for the last time in 1291 and the
Occitan Cathars were exterminated during the
Albigensian Crusade, the crusading ideal became devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe.
The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the
Knights Hospitaller. After the final fall of Acre, they took control of the island of
Rhodes, and in the sixteenth century, were driven to
Malta, before being finally unseated by
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798.
List of crusades
A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades totals nine during the 11th to 13th centuries. This division is arbitrary and excludes many important expeditions, among them those of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. In reality, the crusades continued until the end of the 17th century, the
crusade of Lepanto occurring in 1571, that of
Hungary in 1664, and the crusade to
Candia in 1669. The
Knights Hospitaller continued to crusade in the
Mediterranean Sea around
Malta until their defeat by
Napoleon in 1798. There were frequent "minor" Crusades throughout this period, not only in Palestine but also in the Iberian Peninsula and central Europe, against Muslims and also Christian heretics and personal enemies of the Papacy or other powerful monarchs.
First Crusade 1095-1099
In March 1095 at the
Council of Piacenza, ambassadors sent by
Byzantine Emperor Alexius I called for help with defending his empire against the
Seljuk Turks. Later that year, at the
Council of Clermont,
Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, promising those who died in the endeavor would receive immediate remission of their sins.
Sigurd I of Norway was the first European king who went on a crusade and crusader armies managed to defeat two substantial Turkish forces at
Dorylaeum and at
Antioch.
The
Siege of Antioch took place shortly before the siege on Jerusalem during the first Crusade. Antioch fell to the Franks in May 1098 but not before a lengthy siege. The ruler of Antioch wasn't sure how the Christians living within his city would react and he forced them to live outside the city during the siege, though he promised to protect their wives and children from harm, while Jews and Muslims fought together. The siege only came to end when the city was betrayed and the Franks entered through the water-gate of the town causing the leader to flee. Once inside the city, as was standard military practice at the time, the Franks then massacred the civilians, destroyed mosques and pillaged the city. The crusaders finally marched to the walls of Jerusalem with only a fraction of their original forces.
Siege of Jerusalem
The Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against the invading Franks. They were unsuccessful though and on
15 July 1099 the crusaders entered the city. The "isolation, alienation and fear" As a result of the First Crusade, several small
Crusader states were created, notably the
Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The Crusaders also tried to gain control of the city of
Tyre, but were defeated by the Muslims. The people of Tyre asked
Zahir al-Din Atabek, the leader of
Damascus, for help defending their city from the Franks with the promise to surrender Tyre to him. When the Franks were defeated the people of Tyre didn't surrender the city, but Zahir al-Din simply said “What I've done I've done only for the sake of God and the Muslims, nor out of desire for wealth and kingdom.”
After gaining control of Jerusalem the Crusaders created four Crusader states: the
kingdom of Jerusalem, the
County of Edessa, the
Principality of Antioch and the
County of Tripoli. Initially, Muslims did very little about the Crusader states due to internal conflicts.
Eventually, the Muslims began to reunite under the leadership of Imad al-Din Zangi. He began by re-taking Edessa in 1144. It was the first city to fall to the Crusaders, and became the first to be recaptured by the Muslims. This led the Pope to call for a second Crusade.
Crusade of 1101
Following this crusade there was a second, less successful wave of crusaders. This is known as the Crusade of 1101 and may be considered an adjunct of the First Crusade.
Second Crusade 1147–1149
After a period of relative peace in which Christians and Muslims co-existed in the Holy Land, Muslims conquered the town of
Edessa. A new crusade was called for by various preachers, most notably by
Bernard of Clairvaux. French and South German armies, under the Kings
Louis VII and
Conrad III respectively, marched to Jerusalem in 1147 but failed to win any major victories, launching a failed pre-emptive siege of Damascus, an independent city that would soon fall into the hands of
Nur ad-Din, the main enemy of the Crusaders. On the other side of the Mediterranean, however, the Second Crusade met with great success as a group of Northern European Crusaders stopped in Portugal, allied with the Portuguese, and retook Lisbon from the Muslims in 1147. North Germans and Danes attacked the
Wends during the 1147
Wendish Crusade, which was unsuccessful as well.
Third Crusade 1187–1192
In 1187,
Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, recaptured Jerusalem, following the Battle of Hattin. After taking Jerusalem back from the Christians the Muslims spared civilians and for the most part left churches and shrines untouched to be able to collect ransom money from the Franks. Saladin is remembered respectfully in both European and Islamic sources as a man who "always stuck to his promise and was loyal." The reports of Saladin's victories shocked Europe.
Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by several of Europe's most important leaders:
Philip II of France,
Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart), and
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick drowned in
Cilicia in 1190, leaving an unstable alliance between the English and the French. Before his arrival in the Holy Land Richard captured the island of Cyprus from the Byzantines in 1191. From the Frankish point of view, an oath made to a non-Christian was no oath at all. Philip left, in 1191, after the Crusaders had recaptured Acre from the Muslims. The Crusader army headed south along the coast of the
Mediterranean Sea. They defeated the Muslims near
Arsuf, recaptured the port city of Jaffa, and were in sight of Jerusalem.Many of the Muslims though were not happy with Al-Kamil for giving up control of Jerusalem and in 1244 the Muslims regained control of the city.
Seventh Crusade 1248–1254
The papal interests represented by the
Templars brought on a conflict with Egypt in 1243, and in the following year a
Khwarezmian force summoned by the latter stormed Jerusalem. The crusaders were drawn into battle at
La Forbie in
Gaza. The crusader army and its Bedouin mercenaries were completely defeated within forty-eight hours by
Baibars' force of
Khwarezmian tribesmen. This battle is considered by many historians to have been the death knell to the
Kingdom of Outremer. Although this provoked no widespread outrage in Europe as the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 had done,
Louis IX of France organized a crusade against Egypt from 1248 to 1254, leaving from the newly constructed port of
Aigues-Mortes in southern France. It was a failure, and Louis spent much of the crusade living at the court of the crusader kingdom in Acre. In the midst of this crusade was the first
Shepherds' Crusade in 1251.
Eighth Crusade 1270
The eighth Crusade was organized by
Louis IX in 1270, again sailing from Aigues-Mortes, initially to come to the aid of the remnants of the crusader states in
Syria. However, the crusade was diverted to
Tunis, where Louis spent only two months before dying. For his efforts, Louis was later canonised. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades are counted as a single crusade. The Ninth Crusade is sometimes also counted as part of the Eighth.
Ninth Crusade 1271–1272
Edward I of England undertook another expedition against
Baibars in 1271, after having accompanied Louis on the Eighth Crusade. Louis died in Tunisia. The Ninth Crusade was deemed a failure and ended of the Crusades in the Middle East.
In their later years, faced with the threat of the Egyptian
Mamluks, the Crusaders' hopes rested with a
Franco-Mongol alliance. The
Ilkhanate's
Mongols were thought to be sympathetic to Christianity, and the Frankish princes were most effective in gathering their help, engineering their invasions of the Middle East on several occasions. Although the Mongols successfully attacked as far south as Damascus on these campaigns, the ability to effectively coordinate with Crusades from the west was repeatedly frustrated most notably at the
Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. The Mamluks eventually made good their pledge to cleanse the entire Middle East of the Franks. With the fall of
Antioch (1268),
Tripoli (1289), and
Acre (1291), those Christians unable to leave the cities were massacred or
enslaved and the last traces of Christian rule in the
Levant disappeared.
The very last Frankish foothold was the island of Ruad, three kilometers from the Syrian shore, which was occupied for several years by the
Knights Templar but was ultimately lost to the
Mamluks in the
Siege of Ruad on September 26th, 1302.
Northern Crusades (Baltic and Germany)
Baltic Sea area and in
Central Europe were efforts by (mostly German) Christians to subjugate and convert the peoples of these areas to Christianity. These Crusades ranged from the 12th century, contemporaneous with the Second Crusade, to the 16th century.
Contemporaneous with the Second Crusade,
Saxons and
Danes fought against
Polabian Slavs in the 1147
Wendish Crusade. In the 13th century, the
Teutonic Knights led
Germans,
Poles, and
Pomeranians against the
Old Prussians during the
Prussian Crusade.
Between 1232 and 1234, there was a crusade against the
Stedingers. This crusade was special, because the Stedingers were not heathens or heretics, but fellow Roman Catholics. They were free
Frisian farmers who resented attempts of the count of
Oldenburg and the archbishop
Bremen-Hamburg to make an end to their freedoms. The archbishop excommunicated them, and
Pope Gregory IX declared a crusade in 1232. The Stedingers were defeated in 1234.
The Teutonic Order's attempts to conquer
Orthodox Russia (particularly the Republics of
Pskov and
Novgorod), an enterprise endorsed by
Pope Gregory IX, can also be considered as a part of the Northern Crusades. One of the major blows for the idea of the conquest of Russia was the
Battle of the Ice in 1242. With or without the Pope's blessing, Sweden also undertook several
crusades against Orthodox Novgorod.
Other crusades
Crusade against the Tatars
In 1259 Mongols led by
Burundai and
Nogai Khan ravaged the principality of
Halych-Volynia,
Lithuania and
Poland. After that
Pope Alexander IV tried without success to create a crusade against the
Blue Horde.
In the 14th century, Khan
Tokhtamysh combined the Blue and White Hordes forming the
Golden Horde. It seemed that the power of the Golden Horde had begun to rise, but in 1389, Tokhtamysh made the disastrous decision of waging war on his former master, the great
Tamerlane. Tamerlane's hordes rampaged through southern
Russia, crippling the Golden Horde's economy and practically wiping out its defenses in those lands.
After losing the war, Tokhtamysh was then dethroned by the party of Khan Temur Kutlugh and Emir Edigu, supported by Tamerlane. When Tokhtamysh asked
Vytautas the Great for assistance in retaking the Horde, the latter readily gathered a huge army which included Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Russians,
Mongols,
Moldavians, Poles, Romanians and
Teutonic Knights.
In 1398, the huge army moved from Moldavia and conquered the southern steppe all the way to the
Dnieper River and northern
Crimea. Inspired by their great successes, Vytautas declared a 'Crusade against the Tatars' with
Papal backing. Thus, in 1399, the army of Vytautas once again moved on the Horde. His army met the Horde's at the
Vorskla River, slightly inside Lithuanian territory.
Although the Lithuanian army was well equipped with
cannon, it couldn't resist a rear attack from Edigu's reserve units. Vytautas hardly escaped alive. Many princes of his kin—possibly as many as 20—were killed (for example,
Stefan Musat, Prince of
Moldavia and two of his brothers, while a fourth was badly injured ), and the victorious Tatars besieged
Kiev. "And the Christian blood flowed like water, up to the Kievan walls," as one chronicler put it. Meanwhile, Temur Kutlugh died from the wounds received in the battle, and Tokhtamysh was killed by one of his own men.
Crusades in the Balkans
To counter the expanding
Ottoman Empire, several crusades were launched in the 15th century.
The most notable are:
Aragonese Crusade
The
Aragonese Crusade, or Crusade of Aragón, was declared by
Pope Martin IV against the
King of Aragón, Peter III the Great, in 1284 and 1285.
Alexandrian Crusade
The
Alexandrian Crusade of October 1365 was a minor seaborne crusade against Muslim
Alexandria led by
Peter I of Cyprus. His motivation was at least as commercial as religious. It had limited success.
Hussite Crusade
The Hussite Crusade(s), also known as the "
Hussite Wars," or the "Bohemian Wars," involved the military actions against and amongst the followers of
Jan Hus in
Bohemia in the period 1420 to circa 1434. The Hussite Wars were arguably the first European war in which hand-held gunpowder weapons such as
muskets made a decisive contribution. The
Taborite faction of the Hussite warriors were basically infantry, and their many defeats of larger armies with heavily armoured knights helped affect the infantry revolution. In the end, it was an inconclusive war.
Swedish Crusades
The
Swedish conquest of
Finland in the
Middle Ages has traditionally been divided into three "crusades": the
First Swedish Crusade around 1155 AD, the
Second Swedish Crusade about 1249 AD and the
Third Swedish Crusade in 1293 AD.
The First Swedish Crusade is purely legendary, and according to most historians today, never took place as described in the legend and didn't result in any ties between Finland and Sweden. For the most part, it was made up in the late 13th century to date the Swedish rule in Finland further back in time. No historical record has also survived describing the second one, but it probably did take place and ended up in the concrete conquest of southwestern Finland. The third one was against
Novgorod, and is properly documented by both parties of the conflict.
According to archaeological finds, Finland was largely Christian already before the said crusades. Thus the "crusades" can rather be seen as ordinary expeditions of conquest whose main target was territorial gain. The expeditions were dubbed as actual crusades only in the 19th century by the national-romanticist Swedish and Finnish historians.
Dissent Against the Concept of Crusades
Elements of the Crusades were criticized by some from the time of their inception in 1095. For example,
Roger Bacon felt the Crusades were not effective because, "those who survive, together with their children, are more and more embittered against the Christian faith." In spite of some criticism, the movement was still widely supported in Europe long after the fall of Acre in 1291. J. Hoeberichts argues that St. Francis of Assisi stood in complete and unique opposition to the theological justification and the violent methods of Christendom in his book Francis and Islam. Historians agree that Francis crossed enemy lines to meet the Sultan of Egypt. Hoeberichts cast doubt on the intentions most Christian historians assign to Francis. From the fall of Acre forward, the Crusades to recover
Jerusalem and the Christian East were largely lost. Later,
18th century rationalists judged the Crusaders harshly. Likewise, some modern historians in the West expressed moral outrage. As recently as the 1950s, Sir
Steven Runciman wrote a resounding condemnation:
» "High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed...the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God".
Islamic perspective
General:
In the minds of the
Muslims the Crusades were Western invasions motivated by the West’s greed and hatred for
Islam, while the Christian West thought they were reclaiming the Holy Land and stopping the spread of Islam. For the West these wars were known as the ‘crusades’ which comes from the Latin word for cross. The Muslims, on the other hand, referred to the wars as “Frankish Invasions” using the Arabic word al-ifranj which is the term for French although it was applied to Westerns in general. One of the ironic things about the Crusades is that even though “God may have indeed wished it, there's certainly no evidence that the Christians of
Jerusalem did, or that anything extraordinary was occurring to pilgrims there to prompt such a response at that moment in history.”
Results of the Crusades on the Islamic World:
The Crusades have made a lasting impact on the Islamic world, especially in their perception of the West and of Christians. In fact even today Muslims still consider the Crusades to be a symbol of Western hostility toward Islam. The Muslims were horrified by the brutality of the Franks and how they so willingly massacred civilians and broke promises. It didn't help that the Crusaders felt little to no remorse for what they did and when the Muslims compared that to Saladin’s reputation of being a man of honor they thought even less of the Franks.The fact that the Franks were motivated more by politics and greed than true religious reason has led Muslims to feel that when Europe began to colonize the East it was merely a continuation of the Crusades. This view caused the Muslims to set up intellectual barriers and become very isolationist in their policies causing them to be left behind in the world scene. Now extremists of both the Christian and Islamic faith believe that confrontation is inevitable and because of this view the Crusades remain in focus keeping them in an active albeit violent role in contemporary politics.
Eastern Orthodoxy
Like Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Christians also see the Crusades as attacks by "the barbarian West", but centered on the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Among vast quantities of gold, which was accumulated for more than 1300 years by the Roman Empire, many relics and artifacts taken from Constantinople are still to be found in the West, in the
Vatican and elsewhere, like the
Greek Horses on the façade of
St. Mark's in
Venice. Both the cultural and the economic capital gained after of the sack of Constantinople played a significant part in the rise of the Italian cities that gave birth to renaissance.
Popular reputation in Western Europe
In Western Europe, the Crusades have traditionally been regarded by laypeople as heroic adventures, though the mass enthusiasm of common people was largely expended in the First Crusade, from which so few of their class returned. Today, the "
Saracen" adversary is crystallized in the lone figure of
Saladin; his adversary Richard the Lionheart is, in the
English-speaking world, the archetypical crusader king, while Frederick Barbarossa and Louis IX fill the same symbolic niche in German and French culture. Even in contemporary areas, the crusades and their leaders were romanticized in popular literature; the
Chanson d'Antioche was a
chanson de geste dealing with the First Crusade, and the
Song of Roland, dealing with the era of the similarly romanticized
Charlemagne, was directly influenced by the experience of the crusades, going so far as to replace Charlemagne's historic
Basque opponents with Muslims. A popular theme for
troubadours was the knight winning the love of his lady by going on crusade in the east.
In the 14th century,
Godfrey of Bouillon was united with the
Trojan War and the adventures of
Alexander the Great against a backdrop for military and courtly heroics of the
Nine Worthies who stood as popular secular
culture heroes into the 16th century, when more critical literary tastes ran instead to
Torquato Tasso and Rinaldo and Armida, Roger and Angelica. Later, the rise of a more authentic sense of history among literate people brought the Crusades into a new focus for the Romantic generation in the romances of Sir
Walter Scott in the early 19th century. Crusading imagery could be found even in the Crimean War, in which the United Kingdom and France were allied with the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and in
World War I, especially
Allenby's capture of Jerusalem in 1917.
In Spain, the popular reputation of the Crusades is outshone by the particularly Spanish history of the
Reconquista.
El Cid is the central figure.
Role of women
While traditional historiography conceptualizes the crusades as a masculine movement symbolic of honour and male courage, women were also involved.
Women at home were intricately connected whether aware of it or not in the recruitment of crusading men. Their encouragement and familial ties would present men friendly connections which made the prospect of taking the cross more appealing for those risking their lives. Arguably the most significant role that women played in the West during the crusades was their preservation of the home. The best known example is of
Adela of Blois, wife of
Stephen of Blois whose correspondence with her husband while he was on Crusade and she was at home managing his fief has survived in part. It appears she was rather more keen on his crusading than he was. Men could journey to
The Holy Land without having to worry about their home because their wives were in charge of their estates and families.
Even though most women showed their support for the crusades at home, some women took the cross themselves to go on the crusade. Aristocratic women who joined the movement often found that they'd new positions of authority they didn't have in the West.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wealthy queen of France and the wife of king
Louis VII, took the cross from
St. Bernard of Clairvaux on Easter Sunday 1145 to join her husband. Another woman who had ultimate political power in the East was
Melisende of Jerusalem, who under law gained hereditary rights to the crown upon her husband’s death. Like Eleanor, Melisende never led troops into battle, but she did participate in acts of political diplomacy. Less successful was her granddaughter
Sibylla of Jerusalem, whose choice of husband had been a crucial political issue since her childhood. Her second marriage to
Guy of Lusignan made him the
king-consort on the death of
Baldwin IV, with disastrous results. While most women were there to help and care for the crusading men by bringing them water or raising their spirits by offering emotional support, there were women who had specific tasks which defined their feminine characteristics like the washerwoman.
The permanent residents of the Crusader kingdoms, if born in Europe, had usually come unmarried. Very many married women from
Apulia in Southern Italy, where living conditions were often harsh, encouraged young women to take ship for Palestine in the knowledge that many men there were looking for wives.
The most controversial role that women had in the crusades was of course the role which threatened their femininity, actual militancy. When analyzing the primary documentation of female militancy, one must be cautious. The accounts of women fighting come mostly from Muslim historians whose aim was to portray Christian women as barbaric and ungodly because of their acts of killing. The contrasting view from Christian accounts portray women fighting only in emergency situations for the preservation of the camps and their own lives. In these cases women are seen as more feminine while behaving like ‘proper women’. Virtually all crusade writings came from men, and women would have been interpreted subjectively no matter what roles they played.
Legacy
Europe and the West
Until recently, the crusades were remembered favourably in western Europe (countries which were, at the time of the Crusades, Roman Catholic countries), and in countries largely settled by Western Europeans, including the United States. Nonetheless, there have been many vocal critics of the Crusades in Western Europe since the Renaissance, and in recent years, critical views of the crusades have come to dominate most assessments.
Trade
The need to raise, transport and supply large armies led to a flourishing of trade throughout Europe. Roads largely unused since the days of
Rome saw significant increases in traffic as local merchants began to expand their horizons. This wasn't only because the
Crusades prepared Europe for travel, but also because many
wanted to travel after being reacquainted with the products of the Middle East. This also aided in the beginning of the
Renaissance in Italy, as various Italian
city-states from the very beginning had important and profitable trading colonies in the crusader states, both in the
Holy Land and later in captured
Byzantine territory.
Increased trade brought many things to Europeans that were once unknown or extremely rare and costly. These goods included a variety of spices, ivory, jade, diamonds, improved glass-manufacturing techniques, early forms of gun powder, oranges, apples, and other Asian crops, and many other products.
The achievement of preserving Christian Europe must not, however, ignore the eventual fall of the Christian
Byzantine Empire, which was mostly caused by
Fourth Crusade's extreme aggression against
Eastern Orthodox Christianity, largely at the instigation of the infamous
Enrico Dandolo, the
Doge of Venice and financial backer of the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204). The Byzantine lands had been a stable Christian state since the 4th century, though had been in a crisis immediately before the Fourth Crusade.
Muslims traditionally celebrate Saladin as a hero against the Crusaders. In the 21st century, some in the Arab world, such as the
Arab independence movement and
Pan-Islamism movement, continue to call Western involvement in the Middle East a "crusade". The Crusades were regarded by the Islamic world as cruel and savage onslaughts by European Christians.
The most devastating long term consequence of the crusades, according to historian
Peter Mansfield, was the creation of an Islamic mentality that sought a retreat into isolation. He says "Assaulted from all quarters, the Muslim world turned in on itself. It became oversensitive [and] defensive… attitudes that grew steadily worse as world-wide evolution, a process from which the Muslim world felt excluded, continued.".
Jewish community
Though the Muslims in power at the time tried to protect the Jews in The Holy Land, the Crusaders' atrocities against them in the German and Hungarian towns, later also in those of France, England, and in the massacres of Jews in Palestine and Syria have become a significant part of the
history of anti-Semitism, although no Crusade was ever declared against Jews. These attacks left behind for centuries strong feelings of ill will on both sides. The social position of the Jews in western Europe was distinctly worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the Crusades. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of
Pope Innocent III and formed the turning-point in medieval
anti-Semitism. It must also be noted that Pope Innocent III reiterated papal injunctions against forcible conversions of Jews, and added: "No Christian shall do the Jews any personal injury...or deprive them of their possessions...or disturb them during the celebration of their festivals...or extort money from them by threatening to exhume their dead.".
The crusading period brought with it many narratives from Jewish sources. Among the better-known Jewish narratives are the chronicles of Solomon Bar Simson and Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan, "
The Narrative of the Old Persecutions," by
Mainz Anonymous, and "
Sefer Zekhirah," and "
The Book of Remembrance," by Rabbi
Ephraim of Bonn.
Caucasus
In the
Caucasus Mountains of
Georgia, in the remote highland region of
Khevsureti, a tribe called the
Khevsurs are thought to possibly be direct descendants of a party of crusaders who got separated from a larger army and have remained in isolation with some of the crusader culture intact. Into the 20th century, relics of armor, weaponry and chain mail were still being used and passed down in such communities. Russian serviceman and ethnographer
Arnold Zisserman who spent 25 years (1842–67) in the Caucasus, believed the exotic group of Georgian highlanders were descendants of the last Crusaders based on their customs, language, art and other evidence. American traveler
Richard Halliburton saw and recorded the customs of the tribe in 1935.
Etymology and use of the term "crusade"
» For other uses of the term "crusade", see Crusade (disambiguation).
The crusades were never referred to as such by their participants. The original crusaders were known by various terms, including
fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of
Saint Peter) or
milites Christi (knights of Christ). They saw themselves as undertaking an
iter, a journey, or a
peregrinatio, a pilgrimage, though pilgrims were usually forbidden from carrying arms. 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; the word "crusade" (coming into English from the
French croisade, the
Italian crociata, the
Portuguese cruzada, or the German
Kreuzzug) developed from this.
Since the 17th century, the term "crusade" has carried a connotation in the
West of being a righteous campaign, usually to "root out
evil", or to fight for a just cause. In a non-historical common or theological use, "crusade" has come to have a much broader emphatic or religious meaning—substantially removed from "armed struggle."
In a broader sense, "crusade" can be used, always in a
rhetorical and
metaphorical sense, to identify as righteous any war that's given a
religious or
moral justification.
A June 2, 1944 message to
Allied troops before the
Normandy landings, began with
General Eisenhower stating, "Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we've striven these many months." His later bestselling memoir was entitled
Crusade in Europe.
Ardent activists may also refer to their causes as "crusades," as in the "Crusade against Adult Illiteracy," or a "Crusade against Littering." In recent years, however, the use of "crusade" as a positive term has become less frequent in order to avoid giving offense to Muslims or others offended by the term, and as critical views of the Crusades have become dominant. The term may also sarcastically or pejoratively characterize the
zealotry of agenda promoters, for example with the moniker "Public Crusader" or the campaigns "Crusade against abortion," and the "Crusade for prayer in public schools."
In line with this usage
George W. Bush in 2002 described his anti-terrorism campaign as a "crusade" but was compelled to repudiate the term when it was pointed out that the word had a very different, and offensive, meaning to Muslims and Jews.
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