The Crusades: Salvation or Exploitation

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The crusades refer to the military campaigns by the Roman Catholic Christians mostly motivated by a religious factor between the 11th and 16th centuries BC, largely against the Muslims. In 1095, Pope Urban initialized the first crusade aiming at restoring the access of the Holy Lands near Jerusalem to the Christians (Essaycamp, n.d).
Six major crusades followed, plus numerous others, a struggle that spanned an intermittent 200-year period. It ended with Christians losing their last stronghold in the Holy Land at Acre, after which no further campaign by the Roman Catholic Europe was experienced in the East (Wikipedia, n.d).
Salvation of the Christians can be said to have been one of the motives of the crusades, thereby strengthening the religious case. Pope Urban, a religious figure, call for the first crusade in 1095 shows that salvation might have been the major motive for the calling. Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the ninth and tenth centuries flourished (Trotter, 1987), and now that this was being threatened, the religious leaders felt the need to protect their followers. It has been documented that there was a general tendency among Latin Chroniclers to perceive Muslim presence around Jerusalem as violation of Christian holy places, they thus mounted the crusades on a religious ground to purify the lands from defilements by the Muslims (Syracuse University Press, 2001, p. 5).
The crusades are also interpreted as being used as exploitation by the leadership. The papacy realized the crusade vows could be of useful income. This was especially so since the crusades obliged the knights to carry their mandate against the perceived enemy (Trotter, 1987). Conflicts between the state and the church for control laced the crusad...

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...alebi, M., Yusoff, K., and Nor, M.R.M,. (2012). The Impact of Islamic Civilization and Culture
In Europe During the Crusades. World Journal of Islamic History and Civilization, 2(3): 182-187.
Crusades. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 18, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades Crusades Essay. (n.d.). In Essaycamp. Retrieved April 18, 2014 from http://essaycamp.com/examples/the-crusades-essay Chazan, R., (1987). European Jewry and the First Crusade
“Gender Bias and Religious Intolerance in Accounts of the ‘Massacres’ of the First Crusade”,
In Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of Crusades, eds. M. Gervers and
J. Powell (Syracuse University Press, 2001, p. 5).
Hillenbrand, C. (2000). The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives
Trotter, D. A. (1987). Medieval French Literature and the Crusades (1100-1300)

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