The Crusades Dbq

1. The Crusades were a military campaign that began in 1095 CE when Christian armies waged a holy war against Muslims in the holy land of Jerusalem, at the urging of Pope Urban II. The Muslims began to seize and capture land of the Christians causing a multitude of battles and conquests by the Muslims. The once powerful Roman Empire, known also as the Byzantine Empire, was conquered by the Muslims and reduced in size to little more than Greece. It was certainly out of desperation, that the Emperor Constantinople asked the Christian armies of Western Europe to help their Christian brethren from the East. This was a time when the Christian faith and culture had to either defend its own self or submit to Islam; the Crusades were the only line of defense for the empire. The Crusade fighters were seen as errands of mercy on a mission to right the terrible wrong that had been done to their nation by the Muslims.

2. During the middle ages, the church and the

Consequently people of all social classes and ages were volunteering, fighting, and waging war out of a sense of duty to the church, without regard for the toll these battles would have on lives lost and damage to land. Even though the subsequent Crusades were encouraged by the Roman Catholic leaders, the battles were failures because the Christians ended up quarreling among themselves and the Muslims were able to take back land that had previously been fought over. Sadly, the Crusaders took advantage of the opportunity to rob and pillage in faraway lands, all under the self-serving sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and their love for God. The irony of the Crusades is that the Roman Catholic Church’s original focus was to rescue the disciples and reunite the Roman Catholic kingdom, when instead it divided the religion and allowed for weaknesses that the Muslims were able to use in their