THESIS STATEMENT
The First Crusade was one of many long and brutal ordeals to take back the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks.
PURPOSE STATEMENT
The research and the analysis of the information found in this paper will display the events leading to and of the First Crusade.
INTRODUCTION
Wars are fought for many reasons now and in the past. Some wars are fought for self glory. Some are fought for riches and power. Others are fought for a people’s god or gods, but the Crusades were fought for all these reasons. The knights, churchmen, and lay people all came to battle for their own purposes whether it be out of selfishness or self-giving. All men have their reasons but not all their reasons match the man.
THE ISLAM TAKEOVER
At this time,
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the Muslims had been doing their best to take control of the entire Middle East. By the end of 632 AD, the Muslims had taken Arabia from the Arabs. Later, by the end of the 9th century after years of battle, the Muslims had taken the southern half of the fallen Holy Roman Empire, including Jerusalem which was a point of interest for pilgrims on their pilgrimages. Soon after these events, the Seljuk Turks converted to and accepted the Islam culture. The Seljuk Turks had been known to be very radical in their beliefs and because of this, no other group of Muslims wanted to come in between the Seljuk Turk and whatever goals they set to achieve. Now on the other side of religion, the Christians had been enslaved, held for ransom, or killed by the Turks on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
The timeline on lordsandladies.org also states “3000 Christian Pilgrims were massacred in Jerusalem and the Christian churches were destroyed or used as stables”. Christian men and women feared these radical people with great fear. Something had to been done about this threat. These occurrences lead us to the call to the famous brutal and violent …show more content…
Crusades. THE BEGINNING OF AN END In the year 1095, Emperor Alexius I sent an ambassador to Pope Urban II to discuss the horrible events that were taking place in Jerusalem and the rising threat of the Seljuk Turks to not only the Holy Roman Empire but also the Byzantine Empire. After consideration of what would happen if the Seljuk Turks were not stopped, Pope Urban called the Council of Clermont. This would become the beginning of the end for Seljuk Turks and the Empire they had taken control of. On November 27th, 1095, Pope Urban stood in an open field on an elevated platform in front of knights, laymen, and churchmen and preached of the problem in Jerusalem.
Vanessa Brake says the same thing. “Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade by calling upon his fellow Christians to reclaim the Holy City of Jerusalem, and to seek revenge on the followers of Islam, whom he accused of committing horrendous crimes against Christendom”. These men for whatever reason; selfishness, self-glory, riches, power, fear, godly power, took up the cross to the Holy Land to fight the foreign threat.
HOLY MEN AND THEIR COMMANDEMENTS
Now there was a problem, a contradiction to the Catholic faith. The fifth commandment God gave to Moses says “Thou shall not kill”. People of the era were deeply concerned with religion and the way that they lived their lives. The holy people had to find a way around the fifth commandment and so, it was done. Pope Urban II put it in away so that it seemed like this; “It is not sinful if you kill infidels”.
Even after one sin was forgiven, Pope Urban II promised any man who fought in the Crusade an indulgence. The Webster’s New Dictionary says that an indulgence is “remission of punishment still due to a sin committed but forgiven”. The problem with this is that an indulgence forgives past sins, not future sins. This issue will be more prevalent
later. THE FIRST CRUSADE The First Crusade began with the Battle of Dorylaeum in 1097. With a close victory, they had taken Edessa. In 1098, the victory of the Battle of Antioch took Jerusalem and Nicea. To win the Holy Land back from the Seljuk Sultan, Kilij Arslan, the crusaders put Jerusalem under siege for seven weeks. This sprang the easy victory to take back the Holy Land. Later in 1099 in the Battle of Ascaloh, the crusaders took Acre. With the end of the Battle of Ascaloh, the First Crusade is ended. During the battles, the holy cause of the crusaders was not kept holy at all. The crusaders did very unholy things because they believed that their indulgence gave amnesty any sin in their life. They raped, pillaged, murdered innocent and did whatever else they pleased. For these reasons, the holy men were frowned upon. CONCLUSION Although the first Crusade’s goal to take back the Holy Land had very successfully been achieved, there were still many problems with the ongoing adventure. Holy men became sinful. Many people died innocent, and the First Crusade sprang the beginning of much more blood spill and other sinful events, i.e. the other Crusades. Because of these events, there are still religious prejudices today.
The First Crusade was propelled in 1095 by Pope Urban II to recover control of the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Christian Holy Land from Muslims.
Foss explains, “What Urban needed was an enterprise, clearly virtuous in serving the ends of Christiandome… in these moments of reflection, the popes mind turned towards Jerusalem.” Urban II reflects back on the first taking of the Holy City after the defeat of the Byzantine Empire in 1071, and begins to question what his people know about the Turkish race and really the ideology of Islamic thought. Foss goes on to examine the ignorance of westerners and needed to be “reminded [by the pope] of the infamous heathens, their cruelty and hatred of Christians,” hoping this would justify the first Holy Crusade. However, Foss identifies the creativity of the Pope’s language to persuade the knights and army of the people to embark on the Holy Crusade based on the Muslims cruel actions turned onto their fellow Christians. Claiming the Muslims “Killed captives by torture…poor captives were whipped…and others were bound to the post and used as a target for arrows.” Foss examines the Popes words as an effective effort of persuasion in creating an army of crusaders to help clean “…Holy places, which are now treated with ignominy and polluted with Filthiness” and any sacrifice in Jerusalem is a “promise of a spiritual reward… and death for
The First Crusade was called in 1096 by Pope Urban II. The reasons for the First Crusade was to help obtain Jerusalem known as the holy land. During this time period the Muslims were occupying Jerusalem. First Crusade contained peasants and knights’ whose ethnicities consist of Franks, Latin’s, and Celts which were all from the western part of Europe. To get peasants and knights to join Pope Urban II objectives in return of a spiritual reward called “remission of all their sins” which was to be redeemed of any sins the individual has committed. When sins are redeemed Crusaders believed that they will escape the torment of hell. When lords and knights joined the crusade they were known as military elites. Crusaders were known as soldiers of Christ.
The First Crusade is often cited as one of the most damnable consequences of religious fanaticism. A careful inspection of the circumstances and outcomes, however, will reveal a resultant political restructuring of Europe under the banner of Christendom. The purpose of this investigation is to investigate Pope Urban II’s motives in initiating the First Crusade, with a particular focus on the consolidation of the Western Church’s influence in Europe. Among the primary sources that will be consulted are the letter sent by Patriach Alexios of Constantinople to Urban, and an account of Urban’s speech at Clermont. Relevant excerpts from both of these primary sources, as well as contextual evidence and a wide array of historiography, will be taken
The first crusade was held only in order to fulfill desire of the Christians of the recapturing the center of the Christian faith-Jerusalem, which has been controlled by the Muslim nation for more than 400 years. This military campaign was followed with severe cruelty and harsh actions against Muslims which cannot be justified with anything but religious and material interest.
There were many major social, political, religious and economic changes that occurred during the crusades. But first, a brief history to give back to these reasons. In the year 1095, the First Crusade was just beginning. Pope Urban II called on Christians to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim oppressors. He promised indulgences and the gift of eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven for those fighting in the holy war.
This was enough to convince about 60,000 Europeans, many of them peasants to start on the First Crusade to the Holy Land ("THE CRUSADES TO THE HOLY LAND”). Many of the soldiers who went on the Crusades also hoped to acquire land and riches and return a war hero. This was the first time the Catholic Church had seen penitential warfare- “warfare in the service and defense of the Church for the ‘remission of your sins’”("THE CRUSADES TO THE HOLY LAND”). The whole mentality of the Crusades was to destroy any other beliefs including paganism and Judaism, which lead to all kinds of violence and persecution, with Jews becoming a common target, even entire Jewish communities were slaughtered ("How Christianity Rose to Dominate Europe."). Even the Christians were not safe, as many were killed in settlements along the way. Pope Urban was the one who brought out this idea that it was okay to kill non-Christians, and, even beyond that, IF you went to the Holy Land on a Crusade, you received a free ticket to heaven even if you died there. Does this sound a little bit familiar? Perhaps a little like those who truly believe that they’re gaining salvation by blowing up a group of innocent people along with themselves? Or flying a plane full of passengers into building full of people? Well, the First Crusaders marched to Jerusalem leaving death and
The Crusades were one of the most prominent events in Western European history; they were not discrete and unimportant pilgrimages, but a continuous stream of marching Western armies (Crusaders) into the Muslim world, terminating in the creation and eventually the fall of the Islamic Kingdoms. The Crusades were a Holy War of Roman Christianity against Islam, but was it really a “holy war” or was it Western Europe fighting for more land and power? Through Pope Urban II and the Roman Catholic Church’s actions, their proposed motivations seem unclear, and even unchristian. Prior to the Crusades, Urban encouraged that Western Europe fight for their religion but throughout the crusades the real motivations shone though; the Crusaders were power hungry, land coveting people who fought with non Christian ideals and Morales.
Among some of the largest conflicts in the world stand the Crusades; a brutal conflict that lasted over 200 years and was debatably one of the largest armed religious conflicts in the history of humankind. Since this is so clearly an event of importance, historians have searched vigorously for the true answer as to why the crusades began. Ultimately, because of accusatory views on both the sides of the Christians and of the Muslims, the two groups grew in such hatred of each other that they began to act in deep discrimination of each other. Moreover, Christian motives seemed to be driven mostly by the capture of Jerusalem, the dark ages of Europe and the common-folks desperation for land, wealth, and a spot in heaven. What seems to be continually
The Crusades were a bloody time period. They were a military campaign by the pope and the Roman Catholic Church to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims. They lasted from the 11th- 13th century. They were catastrophic and left Europe in ruins. Although the Crusades were such a violent period of time, they had a positive impact in history because of their role in the renaissance and exposing the Western world to the Eastern.
God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark, will cause readers to question much of what they know about the Crusades, the Crusaders themselves, and the formidable Muslim forces they encountered along the way in liberation of the Holy Land. Stark gives compelling reasons for the Crusades, and argues that readers should not be too quick in following the lead of historians who cast the Crusaders in less than positive light. Stark makes his case supported by evidence that vindicates the valiant struggles of the Crusaders who accomplished the task of keeping Christianity alive through troubled times.
In 1095, Pope Urban II called the first crusade. Happening between 1096 and 1099, the first crusade was both a military expedition and a mass movement of people with the simple goal of reclaiming the Holy Lands taken by the Muslims in their conquests of the Levant. The crusade ended with the capture of Jerusalem in July 1099. However, there has been much debate about whether the First Crusade can be considered an ‘armed pilgrimage’ or whether it has to be considered as a holy war. This view is complicated due to the ways in which the Crusade was presented and how the penitential nature of it changed throughout the course of the Crusade.
A main cause of the Crusades was the treatment of Christian pilgrims. They were robbed, beaten, and then sold. The main group of Turks, the Seljuk Turks, were threatening and growing in power. The Byzantine Emperor, Alexus I, began to become worried and sent out an urgent plea to Pope Urban II, in Rome. He requested for Christian knights to help him fight the Turks. Pope Urban II did agree to his appeal although Byzantine Emperors and Roman Popes were longtime rivals. He also did agree with Alexus I, in fearing that the Turks were expanding. Pope Urban encouraged French and German Bishops and Nobles to also take part in this. “ An accused race has violently invaded the lands of those Christians and had depopulated them by pillage and fire.” This is when Pope Urban II called for a crusade to free the Holy Land. Urban did agree to this having some of his own motives in mind. He was hoping his power would grow in ...
"The Crusades (Overview)." World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. ABC-CLIO, 2011. Web. 12 Oct. 2011.
In order for the crusades to begin, the Christians needed to gather an army to travel and fight the forces of Muslims. With all the power being held by monarchies at this time, the church needed to be cleaver in order to gain troops to put their lives on the line. To gain the support of these warriors and dedication of men, Pope Urban II (1088-1099) challenged those morals of men by telling them to grab their weapons and join the holy war to recover the land of Jerusalem. It was not the challenge that convinced men to take part in this war. The promise of “immediate remission of sins” attracted the men to stand up for their religion and beliefs while at the same time, promising them a trip to heaven when life comes to an end. With this statement, men instantly prepared for battle which in a very short period of time gave the church power which has been held by the monarchies. Men of rich and poor prepared for battle, some wearing ...