Download 14.1 Church Reform and the Crusades

The Crusades: The Beginning
Byzantine Emperor
Alexios I Komnenos
who asked Pope
Urban II for help (left)
• In 1093, Byzantine
emperor asks for
help fighting the
Turks
• Pope Urban II
issues a call for a
Crusade—a “holy
war”
Artistic depiction of Pope
Urban II (left), and him
preaching the First
Crusade (right)
Goals of the Crusades
• Pope wants to reclaim Jerusalem and reunite
Christianity
• Kings use Crusades to send away knights who cause
trouble
• Younger sons hope to earn land or win glory by fighting
(although historian Rodney Stark in God’s Battalions:
The Case for the Crusades disagrees with that theory
because the first three crusades were led by the heads
of the royal families of Europe).
• Later, merchants join Crusades to try to gain wealth
through trade.
First Crusade: 1096-1099
• Pope promises
Crusaders who die a
place in heaven
• First Crusade: three
armies gather at
Constantinople in
1097
• Crusaders capture
Jerusalem in 1099
• Captured lands along
coast divided into
four Crusader states
• Crusaders only win
because Muslim
states are not united
Second, Third, Fourth Crusades: 1147early 1200s
• The Short Version: lots of back
and forth of conquering and
reconquering the Holy Land
• Highlights:
– 1187: Saladin—Muslim leader
and Kurdish warrior—retakes
Jerusalem, and eventually
allows Christian pilgrims
– Muslims unite in the name of
expelling European Christians
– Crusaders sack Constantinople
to create a Roman Catholic
state in 1204 – Byzantium
never really recovers
Right: Looting of
Constantinople
Left: an artistic
representation of
Saladin
The Effects of the Crusades
• Europeans encounter ideas of Aristotle and other
classical works
• “Arabic” numerals and paper production to Europe
• Food and goods exchanged between Europeans and
Muslims
• “Largely failed as military ventures [but] helped
encourage the reintegration of western Europe in the
larger economy of the eastern hemisphere,” Bentley p.
543
• LCrusades show power of Church in convincing
thousands to fight
• Lasting bitterness between Muslims and Christians