Christianity In The 11th Century

In the 11th century, Christianity underwent many changes. The church split in 1054, after many years of lack of communication between the east and west. The church also had many problems on its own, where power-hungry, greedy popes and bishops ruled the church. This continued in 1095, when Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade to aid emperor Alexius and the Byzantines against the Turks. This was a call from God to aid the Christian Byzantines against the “enemies of Christ”--those who were not Christian and were living in the Holy Land--but in reality, was only a move for power. The Crusades were caused primarily by the desire for political and economic gain.

The Crusades were called for by Pope Urban II, who ultimately wanted more power

in the church. He was not the only one with this idea. Between 1073 and 1085 CE, Pope Gregory VII also tried to gain more power for the clergy. He wanted the Catholic Church to always have rule over secular rulers, and likewise, “...urged Christian princes to reclaim lands from Muslims in Spain” (Historical Background). However, the church already had a fair share of power over the people. For many, the idea of God, Heaven and Hell was all they knew. If one followed God’s word--who apparently spoke through the pope--one would be able to go to Heaven, and live eternity happily. On the contrary, if one defied God’s word, they would go to Hell, where they would spend eternity being tortured in various ways. Because of this, many people would follow any sort of instruction from a high-ranking member of the clergy, and took the idea of excommunication--a form of punishment from the church--very seriously, and gave the church the power to make rulers do whatever the church wanted them to. Thus, the idea of the church being number one for decisions in laws was already in many members of the clergy’s heads, so when Urban II called for the First Crusade to get more land, many members thought this was a good idea.
This greed for power and dominance continued when Pope Urban II told crusaders to “take the cross”.

In his speech, to get more people riled up, the pope straight up lied. Urban told the listeners of his speech that the Muslims in Jerusalem attacked, killed and tortured the Christian pilgrims. In reality, the only Christians that were killed were the Byzantines, whom the Muslim Turks were fighting against. The pilgrim Christians in Jerusalem were only harassed. The point of this lie was to get more people riled up against the “enemy”, the Muslims. And that it did--the people became riled to take back their Holy Land. On their way to the city, the Crusaders did many bad things that they did not have to if they were just going for “God”. In around Central Europe, during their journey, some of the leaders of the crusading realized that if they were getting rid of the “pagans” in their holy land, why not rid the ones in their backyard? According to Solomon ben Samson, “...they said to one another: ‘Look now...here, in our midst, are the Jews….Let us...exterminate them from among the nations so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered”. These Crusaders attacked synagogues and Jews across Central Europe, forever shaping the disease of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, the Christian crusaders broke Byzantine emperor Alexius’ promise: something that would not have happened if they were only coming to the area for God. Alexius made them swear that if he were to help the

crusaders take Jerusalem, they would have to give any conquered land to the Byzantine Empire. The crusaders agreed; they would give the emperor the land. But this promise was made to be broken. After the crusaders took over some the cities in the area, like Edessa, on their way to Jerusalem, the crusaders did not give it to the emperor; they kept it for themselves. If the crusaders had truly come for God, they would not have done those terrible things and kept the land for themselves.
The greed continues when they get closer to Jerusalem. There were many instances of greed, but one in particular was the story of Baldwin. When Baldwin was on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, his wife--who was very rich--died. Without her, Baldwin had no access to her wealth, which meant that now, without her, he became poor. In an attempt to get his wealth back, Baldwin looked for a city that he could make wealth off of, and found the Christian city of Edessa. At the same time, the citizens of Edessa were very tired of being constantly attacked by Turkish Muslims, as they were under Christian rule. So when they heard that Baldwin was on his way, the citizens welcomed him with open arms. When he arrived, after being welcomed, Thoros, the city’s heirless ruler, told Baldwin he wanted him to defend the city. Baldwin said he would, but to one condition: he would be the city’s next ruler after Thoros’ death. Thoros agreed, and adopted Baldwin as his son so their deal would be official. However, Thoros did not know that Baldwin was playing him; once he was adopted, Baldwin worked with some traitors to assassinate his new dad. This style of conquering and becoming leaders became part of the crusaders’ calling card, along with “[t]reachery following by massacure...” (The Crusades , Crescent and the Cross). The worst of this was in Ma’arrat al-Numan, where the crusaders stayed for a month and four days. First, they sent an interpreter to tell the residents that if they put their wives, children, and goods in a castle, the crusaders would spare those people’s lives. Going with trend, however, this promise was broken; by dawn the next day, every citizen in the town was dead. The crusaders looted and pillaged everything. This only got worse, when, at a point, some of the crusaders started to eat the corpses of the inhabitants. While this could have been because they started to become either crazy or extremely hungry, chances are the crusaders did this to prove yet again that they were the superior people. Their greed for power went to the point where they even ate the corpses of the thousands that they killed.
Following this, the penises became much more for greed.

When the crusaders reached Jerusalem, they yet again wreaked havoc for power. An unknown source from the First Crusade said that, “...[the Crusaders] seized a great number of men and women, and killed whom they wished...soon the crusaders ran throughout the city, seizing gold, silver, horses, mules, and houses full of al[l] kinds of goods”. Fulk of Charles--another knight fighting in Jerusalem in the First Crusade--stated something similar to this. He said, “[o]ur squires and poorer footmen discovered a trick of the Saracens...they could find byzants in the stomachs and intestines of the dead Saracens, who had swallowed them….after several days, they burned a great heap of bodies, that they might more easily get the precious metal from the ashes”. The crusaders even took “...whatever they could find…” from the houses they entered, and “[t]hus many poor men became rich” (Fulcher). If these men had come for God, they would have not seized anything in sight. They would have not killed everyone, regardless of the their genders or faiths. This crusade was not called for God; it was called for money, power, and

land.