Crusading

The crusading movement encompasses the framework of ideologies and institutions that described, regulated, and promoted the Crusades. The crusades were religious wars that the Latin Church initiated, supported, and sometimes directed during the Middle Ages. The members of the church defined this movement in legal and theological terms based on the concepts of holy war and pilgrimage. The movement merged ideas of Old Testament wars, that were believed to have had God's support, with New Testament Christocentrism. Crusading as an institution began with the encouragement of the church reformers who had undertaken what is commonly known as the Gregorian Reform in the 11thcentury. It declined after the Reformation began during the early 16th century.

The idea of crusading as holy war was based on the Greco-Roman just war theory. This theory characterized a "just war" as one with a legitimate authority as the instigator, waged with a valid cause and good intentions. The crusades were seen by their adherents as a special Christian pilgrimagea physical and spiritual journey authorized and protected by the church. They were acts of both pilgrimage and penance. Participants were considered part of Christ's army and demonstrated this by attaching crosses of cloth to their outfits. This marked them as followers and devotees of Christ, referencing biblical passages exhorting Christians "to carry heircross and follow Christ". Everyone could be involved, with the church considering anyone who died campaigning a Christian martyr. This movement was an important part of late-medieval western culture: it impacted politics, the economy and wider society.

The original focus and objective of the crusading movement was to take Jerusalem and the sacred sites of Palestine from non-Christians. These locations were pivotal for the inception of the First Crusade and the subsequent establishment of crusading as an institution. The campaigns to reclaim the Holy Land were the ones that attracted the greatest support, but the crusading movement's theatre of war extended wider than just Palestine. Crusades were waged in the Iberian Peninsula, in northeastern Europe against the Wends, and in the Baltic region; other campaigns were fought against those the church considered heretics in France, Germany, and Hungary, as well as in Italy against opponents of the popes. By definition, all crusades were waged with papal approval and through this reinforced the Western European concept of a single, unified Christian church under the Pope.

Background

The Crusades are commonly defined as religious wars waged by Western European warriors during the Middle Ages for the holy city of Jerusalem in Palestine. However, their geographical scope, chronological boundaries, and underlying motivations are fluid in academic studies. The crusading movement fostered distinctive institutions and ideologies, exerting a heavy influence on medieval societies not only in Catholic Europe but also in neighbouring regions.

Classical just war theories

In classical antiquity, Greek philosophers and Roman jurists developed just war theories that would later shape crusading theology. Aristotle emphasised just end, stating that "war must be for the sake of peace". Roman legal tradition required a —just cause—and held that only legitimate authorities could declare war; defensive actions, restitution of property, and punitive measures were among the acceptable grounds for warring.

Although the Bible—the central Christian scripture—contains conflicting views on violence, the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the prompted the emergence of Christian interpretations of just war. Ambrose, a former imperial official turned bishop, was the first to equate enemies of the state with enemies of the Church.

The empire was divided into two parts in 395. Fifteen years later, the sack of the city of Rome by the Visigoths inspired Ambrose's student Augustine to write ''The City of God'', a monumental historical study. In it, Augustine argued that the biblical prohibition on killing did not apply to wars waged with divine approval. For him, a war must be declared by legitimate authority, pursued for just causes after peaceful alternatives had failed, and conducted with restrained force and good intent; just causes included self-defence, the enforcement of justice, and recovery of stolen property. However, his scattered statements about warfare were nearly forgotten after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476.

Tripartite world

From the ruins of the Western Roman Empire, new Christian kingdoms emerged, largely ruled by Germanic warlords. For this new aristocracy, fight and comradeship were core social values. Clergy were to praise these leaders' violent acts to secure patronage. Yet the Church still regarded homicide as a sin, and those who killed in battle were expected to do penance—typically fasting—to obtain absolution.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire endured, though much of its territory, including Palestine, was conquered by the rapidly expanding Islamic Caliphate by the . Islam's holiest text, the Quran contains several verses on —struggle to spread and defend the faith. By the early , Muslim forces had crossed into Europe, conquering much of the Iberian Peninsula. Christians living under Muslim rule were not forced to convert but had to pay a special tax, the . As Muslim conquests stabilised, a threefold civilisational order emerged from the old Roman world: the turbulent and fragmented West, the diminished Byzantine state, and the offensive Islamic world.

Holy wars and piety

Christian resistance to Muslim expansion led to the formation of the small Kingdom of Asturias in northwestern Iberia. Within a century, the resistance evolved into an expansionist movement, seen by the natives as divinely sanctioned—a mission to reclaim lost Christian lands. The brought repeated invasions by non-Christian groups across Western Europe, reviving the notion of holy war. In 846, Pope Leo IV promised salvation on God's behalf to those who died defending the Patrimony of Saint Peter, the papal territories in Central Italy.

As warfare became a near-constant reality, a new military class of mounted warriors emerged. Referred to as in contemporary texts, they were skilled in specialised weapons like the heavy lance. To curb their violence, church leaders initiated the Peace of God movement, threatening excommunication for transgressors. Quite oddly, this effort to reduce bloodshed also militarised the Church, as bishops increasingly had to raise armies to enforce the Peace.

In the absence of strong central authority, regional strongmen took control of parishes and abbeys, often installing unfit candidates in ecclesiastical roles. Believers feared these irregular appointments jeopardised the validity of sacraments, and anxiety about afterlife punishments intensified. Sinners were expected to confess and perform acts of penance before being reconciled with the Church. As penance could be burdensome, priests began offering indulgences , commuting such duties into acts of piety like almsgiving or pilgrimage. Among these, penitential pilgrimages to Palestine held special spiritual value, as the region was the setting of the ministry of Jesus Christ. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—believed to mark Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection—became the most revered destination.

Church reforms

The widespread fear of damnation induced a series of reform movements within the Church, many initiated by affluent monasteries. Cluny Abbey set a decisive precedent in 910, when its foundation charter guaranteed the monks the right to freely elect their abbot. The Cluniac Reform spread rapidly, gaining support from aristocrats who valued the monks' prayers for their souls. The Cluniac houses answered solely to papal authority.

The popes, regarded as the successors of Peter the Apostle, claimed primacy over the entire Church, citing Jesus's praise for Peter. In reality, however, Roman noble families controlled the papacy until Holy Roman Emperor Henry III seized Rome in 1053. He appointed reform-minded clerics who promoted the so-called Gregorian Reform advocating the " liberty of the church". This movement outlawed simony—the buying and selling of church offices—and gave high-ranking clerics known as cardinals exclusive right to elect the pope. Andrew Latham, a scholar of international relations, notes that the reformist popes redefined the Church's identity, placing it in structural conflict with "a range of social forces within and beyond Christendom". By then, differences in theology and liturgy between the western and eastern branches of mainstream Christianity had become more pronounced. The resulting tensions led to mutual excommunications in 1054, and the eventual split into the western Roman Catholic and eastern Orthodox Churches, though communion was not entirely severed.

A spiritual revival also took root. New monastic communities like the Carthusians and Cistercians emerged, and the ''Rule of Saint Augustine'' spread among secular clergy. This period saw a rise in Christocentrism, a focus on Christ's life and sufferings, also inspiring a wave of wandering preachers, many of whom defied episcopal authority.

Towards the crusades

Four major powers dominated the Mediterranean world : the Umayyads in Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), the Fatimids in Egypt, the Abbasids in the Middle East (at least in theory), and the Byzantine Empire. Within a few decades, all experienced serious calamities—especially in the East, where climate anomalies triggered famine and instability. In contrast, the climate change benefitted Western Europe, contributing economic and demographic growth.

Al-Andalus fragmented into small Muslim states due to internal strife, making them vulnerable to Christian advances—a process known as the ('reconquest'). The medievalist Thomas Madden describes the as "the training ground for the theological and moral justification of the crusading movement", combining pilgrimage with anti-Muslim warfare. In Egypt and Palestine, repeated failures of the Nile's annual flooding led to famine and interreligious tensions flared up. In 1009, the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim ordered the demolition of the Holy Sepulchre, but it was later rebuilt with Byzantine support. Meanwhile, the influx of Turkic nomads from Central Asia—known as Turkomans— destabilised the Middle East. Their leader Tughril I of the Seljuk clan captured the Abbasids' capital Baghdad in 1055. His successor Alp Arslan routed the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1072, opening Anatolia to Turkoman settlement.

As traditional powers declined, Italian merchants took increasingly control over Mediterranean trade. At the same time, the Normans from northern France emerged as a dynamic force, conquering southern Italy and the island of Sicily by 1091. Their ambitions also threatened papal interests, prompting Pope Leo IX to offer absolution to warriors joining his eventually failed campaign against them. The incident indicates the reform papacy's eagerness to invoke spiritual incentives for warfare.

For Western warriors, war offered an opportunity to seize lands, accumulate power or even establish dynasties. These ambitions often aligned with the aims of reformist popes, who began to offer absolution to participants in campaigns against Muslim states in Sicily and Iberia. Since these had once been Christian lands, papal attention soon turned to Palestine. Pope Gregory VII planned a campaign to liberate Jerusalem as early as 1074, though this plan never materialised. Two years later, debates over the limits of ecclesiastic and secular authority opened the fierce Investiture Controversy. These disputes reawakened interest in just war theory. The theologian Anselm of Lucca compiled Augustine's scattered statements about just wars, arguing that war, in some cases, could be a genuine act of love aimed at preventing sin; his fellow Bonizo of Sutri saw those who died in just wars as martyrs of the faith. These concepts shaped the idea of penitential warfare whereby fighting for a just cause could itself serve as penance.

Crusades

The fusion of classical just war theory, biblical views on warfare, and Augustine’s teaching on legitimate violence provided the Western Church with an ideological framework for engaging in military affairs. By the late , Western Christendom had developed into a union of local churches under papal authority. Amid a religious revival, when concern over personal sin and its afterlife consequences peaked, the papacy was well-positioned to exploit the warrior class's social values, particularly loyalty.

First Crusade

Confronted by devastating Turkoman invasions, the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos appealed to Pope Urban II for help recruiting troops from Western Europe. , says the historian Thomas Asbridge, recognised this as an opportunity "to reaffirm and expand" papal authority. He convened a church council in Clermont in France, where on 27 November 1095 he called for a military campaign against the Turkomans, offering loosely defined spiritual rewards to those who joined. The church historian Jonathan Riley-Smith presents Urban's call as a "revolutionary appeal" for associating "warfare with pilgrimage to Jerusalem".

Urban's appeal sparked unexpected enthusiasm. People from diverse social backgrounds gathered in northwestern Europe, and the first poorly organised groups—some 20,000 to 30,000 crusaders—set out for the East in March 1096. Known as the People's Crusade, this initial movement ended in catastrophe: many died before reaching the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, and most of the survivors were massacred by the Turkomans. A second wave, comprising at least 30,000 warriors and as many non-combatants, departed between August and October 1096 under prominent aristocrats such as Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Bohemond of Taranto, and Godfrey of Bouillon. By then, the Near East had fragmented into competing states, each ruled by a Seljuk prince, Turkoman or Kurdish warlord, or Arab potentate, which facilitated the crusaders' progress. They defeated Turkoman forces in Anatolia and Syria, and captured two important cities, Edessa and Antioch, and ultimately seized Jerusalem on 15 July 1099.

Crusades for the Holy Land

The first Crusaders consolidated their conquests into four Crusader states: Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli. Their defence inspired further crusades as early as 1101. Several campaigns, particularly those led by kings, are referred to by numbers. The fall of Edessa in 1144 to the Turkoman leader Imad al-Din Zengi prompted the next major expedition, the Second Crusade. Despite being led by kings—Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany—it failed in 1148.

Zengi's successor, Nur al-Din unified the Syrian Muslim states and dismantled the Fatimid Caliphate. These territories were brought under the control of Saladin, an ambitious Kurdish general. In 1187, he destroyed the Jerusalemite field army at Hattin in 1187, and conquered most Crusader territory, including the city of Jerusalem. This disaster prompted the Third Crusade led by Emperor Frederick I, Richard I of England and Philip II of France. Though Jerusalem remained under Muslim control, the crusade secured the Crusader states' survival and resulted in the creation of the Kingdom of Cyprus on former Byzantine lands.

The recovery of Jerusalem became the central aim of later crusades, yet the Fourth Crusade was diverted by a Byzantine claimant to Constantinople. The Crusaders sacked the city and established a Latin Empire in the Aegean. The Fifth Crusade against Egypt failed between 1217 and 1221. During the Sixth Crusade in 1229, Jerusalem was recovered through negotiations by the excommunicated Emperor Frederick II, but it was sacked in 1244 by Khwarazmian raiders . The loss of Jerusalem spurred Louis IX of France to launch a crusade against Egypt in 1248. However, the Egyptians triumphed, forcing his withdrawal in 1250.

Other theatres of war

The historian Simon Lloyd emphasises that "crusading was never necessarily tied" to the Holy Land. As early as 1096, Pope Urban discouraged Catalan nobles from joining the First Crusade, offering the same spiritual rewards for continuing their fight against the Moors (Iberian Muslims). In 1123, the First Lateran Council unequivocally equated anti-Moorish campaigns with crusades for the Holy Land. The Iberian crusades advanced Christian expansion across the peninsula, reducing Al-Andalus to the Emirate of Granada by 1248.

Other crusades emerged from conflicts between Christian and non-Christian groups. As early as 1107–08, Saxon leaders referred to the land of the Wends (a pagan Slavic people) as "Our Jerusalem"; though the anti-Wendish war was only officially recognised as a crusade in 1147. From then, the northern German, Danish, Swedish and Polish rulers waged campaigns against the pagan Slavic, Baltic and Finnic tribes—collectively termed the Northern Crusades. Leadership of these anti-pagan efforts passed to the Teutonic Order's warrior monks by the 1260s.

Crusading zeal was also directed at Christian opponents of the papacy. So-called "political crusades" were launched against Emperor , his heirs, and disobedient papal vassals. Heretics—Christians who rejected official Church doctrine—became targets under Pope Innocent III, beginning in 1209. Crusades were later proclaimed against the restored Byzantine Empire after western forces lost Constantinople in 1261.

Later crusades

Between 1250 and 1260, the Mamluks supplanted the Ayyubids—Saladin's relatives—as the dominant Muslim power in the Near East. They launched systematic campaigns against the Crusader states, massacring Christian populations in conquered areas. mounted another crusade, but it ended abruptly with his dead in 1270. Civil war soon factured the Crusader states, and by 1291, the Mamluks had captured the last Frankish strongholds in the Holy Land. Although popes, kings and thinkers continued to propose new crusades to retake Jerusalem, efforts were hampered by events like the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War.

Despite internal strife in the Christian kingdoms, the persisted, culminating in the conquest of Granada by the united forces of Castile and Aragon in 1492. In the early , —sesonal expeditions by Catholic aristocrats to join the Teutonic Knights' campaigns against pagans—became a hallmark of chivalric culture. These efforts, which the historian Eric Christiansen calls an "interminable crusade", brought widespread destruction in the Baltic. In the Western Mediterranean, the papacy often proclaimed crusades against Christian rivals, such as Aragon, Sicily, and rouge mercenary groups. During the Western Schism (1378–1417), with two and later three competing claimants to papacy, the rival popes often called crusades against the other's supporters. The Hussite Wars reignited anti-heretical crusading in 1420, though Hussitism endured in Bohemia.

Extensive piracy in the Mediterranean revived anti-Muslim crusading in the . Major international campaigns were launched against the rising Ottoman Empire, but could not prevent the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Although the Reformation curtailed papal authority, the papacy continued advocate anti-Ottoman crusades, helping to forge coalitions such as the Holy League even into the late .

Theory and theology

Pope appeal at Clermont introduced a remarkably novel concept for most attendees. Though Western Christians had embraced the idea of divinely-sanctioned warfare against the enemies of their faith, theologians and jurists still considered it a subject requiring further reflection. While Urban underlined the military nature of the expedition, his agents largely portrayed it as a pilgrimage. Urban highlighted the suffering of eastern Christians and the brutality of the Turkomans, whereas crusaders primarily focused on the Holy Sepulchre.

Justification

Contemporaries saw the First Crusade as a singular event, the result of God's direct intervention. However, as the movement expanded, divine intervention no longer sufficed as a rationale. Canon lawyers required a clear framework that also reinforced papal authority. The , the most influential collection of church law, included a section justifying wars —but only against heretics. Within a few decades, jurists such as Huguccio began applying Gratian's arguments to conflicts against Muslims. They cited righteous intent, the recovery of unlawfully held Christian lands and the retaliation for violence against Christians as justifications. Crusades against pagans were initially framed as acts of self-defence, but the pagans' conversion became the primary aim of the Northern Crusades in the early . Crusades against the Christian adversaries of the papacy were justified as necessary to enable the Church to defend the Holy Land effectively.

Crusade indulgence

Soon after Clermont, the chronicler Guibert of Nogent observed that "God has instituted in our times holy wars, so that the order of knights and the crowd running in its wake ... might find a new way of gaining salvation". Yet the nature of the spiritual rewards for the First Crusaders remains uncertain. Some sources mention the cancellation of temporal penance; others refer to the complete remission of sins. Pope Urban himself spoke of ('remission of sins') in one letter, and in an other, he promised that those who journeyed to the Holy Land "only for the salvation of their souls" would be absolved of all penance, provided they confessed their sins. His successors often used the formula , but other phrases—such as ('absolution of sins') and ('forgiveness of sins')—also appeared.

Theological discussion of indulgences began . Peter Abelard criticized the practice sharply, but later theologians mainly treated it as a common practise. The Fourth Lateran Council standardized crusade indulgence in 1215, declaring that "sins repented by heart and confessed with mouth" would be remitted. Still, the theological foundation remained ambiguous until , when the doctrine of "Treasury of Merit" emerged. It held that Christ's and the martyrs' sacrifices accumulated spiritual merit, stored by the Church, and available for granting indulgences. Debate over the scope of crusade indulgences persisted. The theologian Bonaventure argued that those who died before fulfilling their crusading vow could not receive a plenary indulgence. In contrast, the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas maintained that remorseful crusaders who confessed their sins would attain salvation even if they died before departing.

Crusaders

An individual crusader's motives for joining a crusade can never be fully determined. While primary sources emphasise religious fervour, wordly ambitions must also be considered, since it was clear from the outset that defending the conquered territories would require permanent Western presence. For many crusaders, spirituality was compatible with purely material activities, such as looting. Contemporary accounts suggest that some sought fame, while the historian Jonathan Phillips assumes that a strong desire for travel also played a role. The medievalist Andrew Jotischky suspects that some saw the crusades as a chance for unpunished violence.

Knights and aristocrats

A scion of a French noble family, Pope Urban addressed his speech at Clermont to France's military elite. While originally a diverse social group, the had by then become a distinct class; however, knighthood became fully equated with nobility only in the late . Aristocrats placed high importance on public displays of piety, and crusading offered a new outlet for what the historian Thomas F. Madden's called their "simple and sincere love of God".

The aristocrats' martial lifestyle involved frequent sin yet left few opportunity for penance. Moreover, traditional pilgrimages on foot stripped them of their status symbols—arms and war horses. Urban's message presented a way to uphold their values without jeopardizing salvation. Crusade rhetoric often echoed the warrior class's moral code, invoking themes like vassalage and honour. Preachers portrayed Christ as a feudal lord, calling knights to fulfill their duty to fight for him. Crusaders saw themselves as ('Christ's warriors') fighting for their lord's stolen patrimony.

Crusading decisions were typically made within broader networks under the leadership of a powerful lord. Knights who fought in a successful campaign earned great prestige, and the imitation of crusader kinsmen could turn crusading into a family tradition. However, failed campaigns brought risk—disgrace and financial ruin were real possibilities. Chivalric nostalgia drove at least two failed late medieval crusades: the Barbary Crusade against northern African corsairs in 1390, and the Crusade of Nicopolis against the Ottomans in 1396.

Clergy

Although shedding blood was theoretically incompatible with their vocation, priests often joined the crusades. At Clermont, Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy was the first to declare his intent to journey to Jerusalem. Secular clerics typically served as chaplains or administrators, while senior churchmen often commanded troops and led military operations. Influential prelates played key roles in initiating Northern Crusades.

Monastic vows, particularly ('stability of place'), formally barred monks from joining a crusade, yet this was frequently ignored. Cistercian and Premonstratensian monks occasionally took up arms during the Northern Crusades. The Fourth Lateran Council explicitly permitted clerics to join a crusade for up to three years without forfeiting the full income from their benefices.

Patricians

Members of the urban elite played a key role in several crusades. Fleets from Genoa, Pisa and Venice aided in establishing and consolidating the Crusader states. In return, they received commercial privileges, quarters in captured cities, and at times rural estates. The conquest of Prussia was supported by the wealthy Baltic city, Lübeck. In Iberia, cities and towns owed military service as defined in royal charters, though these duties were often commuted through a special tax called .

During the Fourth Crusade, the Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo convinced fellow crusader leaders to seize the Catholic city of Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, and later advocated for the attack on Constantinople. Following the city's sack, the Venetians took control of several Aegean Islands, turning them into lordships ruled by Venetian patricians.

Marino Sanudo Torsello, a Venetian, emerged as a prominent crusade theorist. He was the first to propose a naval league against Aegean pirates, involving Catholic powers and island lords from Venice and Genoa. Pope John XXII approved the first such league in 1334.

Commoners

The historian Christopher Tyerman observes that "crusading can be seen as much as a phenomenon of artisans as of knights, of carpentry as much as of castle". Commoners filled essential roles in crusader armies as foot soldiers, sailors, archers, engineers, and squires, and household servants. A typical common crusader was a young man with modest property who joined for pay. Thus, Tyerman notes, "the image of crowds spontaneously leaving fields or workshops to follow the cross is largely mythical".

Following Clermont, Pope Urban barred clergy from accepting crusader vows from those unable to fight and annulled existing ones. Still, the People's Crusade consisted almost entirely of unarmed commoners, inspired by unauthorised preachers like Peter the Hermit whom many viewed as a living saint. In the First Crusade's princely armies, non-combatants nearly matched the number of fighters, prompting the historian Conor Kostick to call it "a slice of European society on the march". Chroniclers like Raymond of Aguilers referred to the common crusaders as ('the poor/defenceless'). Raymond considered their presence vital for divine favour. Another frequent label, , reflected their rural origins. Captured commoners were often tormented or killed, unlike aristocrats, who were usually held for ransom.

Grassroots crusading zeal gave rise to later mass movements known as popular crusades. These included the 1212 Children's Crusade (sparked by two charismatic boys), the 1251 Shepherds' Crusade (inspired by a supposed letter from the Virgin Mary), the 1309 Crusade of the Poor (linked loosely to an official crusade in the Aegean), and the 1320 Shepherds' Crusade. None reached the Holy Land, and both Shepherds' Crusades were forcibly disbanded because of violence.

Enemies and contacts

Muslims

Muslim legal experts divided the world into two spheres, the Muslim world, or ('Abode of Islam'), and the non-Muslim world, or ('Abode of War'). Border regions like Syria and Iberia were battlegrounds of , attracting and —Muslim volunteers—from the Muslim realms. Accounts on Christians' experiences in the Holy Land on the eve of the First Crusade vary. As Jotischky notes, sporadic attacks on pilgrims likely shaped the perception that Christians "were under threat". However, emphasises Asbridge, interreligious conflicts mirrored the "endemic political, military and social struggles of the age".

Western Christians often considered the Muslims as idol-worshippers or heretics. Until , mass killings of Muslim inhabitants in conquered towns were not uncommon. Crusaders generally showed little interest in converting the Levantine Muslims, instead imposing a poll tax akin to the . In the Crusader states, most Muslims were Arabic-speaking farmers. They lived in communities headed by their own chiefs who administered justice based on Islamic law. In Iberia, the —Muslims under Christian rule—were also treated as second-class citizens. Church law included discriminatory measures, though enforcement is unclear.

Initially, few Muslims grasped the crusaders' religious zeal. The Damascene scholar Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami was the first to frame the crusades within the wider expansion of the "Franks", or westerners, in the Mediterranean. He interpreted their success as a sign of divine retribution for the waning spirit of . Zengi was among the first Muslim leaders of the crusading era to be honored with titles, such as "leader of those who fight the Holy War". Afterward, Muslim rulers often emphasised religious motives for fighting the Franks in official records. In Iberia, the Almoravids and the Almohads were the most ardent champions of the . Still, despite heavy religious rhetoric on both sides, alliances between Christian and Muslim rulers were fairly common.

Eastern Christians

The liberaton of eastern Christians was proclaimed a central goal of the First Crusade, yet early encounters between Crusaders and native Christians proved disappointing for both sides. Days after conquering Antioch, Crusader leaders labeled local Christians as "heretics" in a letter to Pope Urban. In 1099, the Catholic clergy temporalily barred native clerics from the Holy Sepulchre. Eastern Christians were subjected to a poll tax in the Crusader states, marking their subordinate status, but their right to self-governance was acknowledged, and some retained substantial landholdings.

The influx of the First Crusaders into Byzantine lands alarmed Emperor Alexios, who had anticipated disciplined mercenaries or manageable allies. Concerned about their territorial ambitions, he secured pledges that all reconquered Byzantine lands would be returned. Despite this, Bohemond kept Antioch—a former Byzantine provincial capital—for himself. Relations between Byzantines and the Crusader states fluctuated between hostility and cooperation. Following the Fourth Crusade, Byzantine successor states like Epiros and Nicaea led local resistance effort, although rivalries sometimes led to temporary Greek–Frankish alliances. In Frankish Greece, many Greek (or aristocrats) preserved their estates and fought alongside Frankish knights, though Greek peasants experienced worsening conditions compared to the Byzantine era.

Known as Melkites, Orthodox Christians comprised the majority of the native Christian population in Palestine during the crusading period and were also prominent in northern Syria. Catholic theologians considered them schismatics, not heretics. In Antioch, Crusaders reinstated John the Oxite as Orthodox patriarch, though later exiled him during a conflict with the Byzantines in 1100. Most Orthodox bishops had fled Palestine before the First Crusade, but scattered references to Orthodox prelates suggest an Orthodox hierarchy under Frankish rule. Orthodox monasticism revived, supported largely by Byzantium, with many monasteries rebuilt and reoccupied. In Frankish Greece, Orthodox bishops who rejected papal supremacy were replaced by Catholic counterparts, but the papacy protected Greek monastic institutions. The Frankish conquest of Byzantine territories reinforced local Orthodox identity, and widespread resistance ensured the failure of attempts to reunite the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Several eastern Christian communities, unlike the Catholics and Orthodox, rejected the Christological rulings of the 451 Council of Chalcedon. Among them, the Armenians—concentrated in northern Syria and Cilicia—were the most respected by the Franks for they had their own autonomous lordships. Many welcomed the Crusaders as liberators and collaborated with them. Intermarriage between Armenian and Frankish elites was not unusual and eventually legitimised the Frankish Lusignans' claim to rule Cilician Armenia. Political motives also led to a tenuous church union between the Cilician Armenian Church and the Holy See in 1198. Anti-Chalcedonian Syriac (or Jacobite) communities, primarily in northern Syria and Mesopotamia, consisted mostly of unarmed, Arabic-speaking villagers. The early-13th-century Catholic bishop Jacques de Vitry described them as "useless as women in battle". Another distinct group, the Maronites of Mount Lebanon remained unmentioned in Catholic writings until 1181, when they entered into communion with Rome, forming the first Eastern Rite Catholic Church.

In northeastern Europe, Catholic and Orthodox churches co-existed in major trading centers, and the schism did not prevent interfaith dynastic marriage between royalty. Catholic missionary activity intensified only after the Fourth Crusade. Internal rivalries among Rus' princes and within the Novgorod Republic occasionally lead to temporary alliances with Crusaders, but no lasting conquests of Rus' lands were achieved.

Pagans

Trade in raw materials and slaves had established a stable contact between Christian and pagan peoples in the Baltic region long before the crusades, although rivalries over trade routes often developed into open warfare. Intensified German colonisation and the unequal distribution of natural resources led to more frequent clashes between the Wends and their Christian neighbours from . In 1146, the Saxon lords were unwilling to abandon their war against the Wends in favour for a campaign to the Holy Land. Regarding the pagans' conversion as a precondition for the Devil's final fall, the Second Crusade's chief propagator, Bernard of Clairvaux, embraced the lords' view, and convinced to call for an anti-Wendish crusade. Wendish society, with its principalities, towns, and hierarchical priestly class was not completely alien to Christian peoples, which facilitated the Wends' quick integration into the Christian world.

To the east of the Wends, the Baltic peoples had resisted Christian proselytism for centuries. Most of them—the Old Prussians, Latvians, Curonians—lived in rural communities under the leadership of local strongmen who accumulated wealth through commerce and plundering raids. To achieve their conversion, the crusaders applied coercion and bribery, and also offered protection them against common enemies. Papal legates made several attempts to defend the converted Balts against exploitation, but with little success. The fourth Baltic people, the Lithuanians were mainly peasants who owed taxes and services to their native lords. External threat from all directions brought about Lithuania's unification by the grand prince Mindaugas in the . He was baptised and received a royal crown from Pope Innocent IV in 1253, but his successors persisted with paganism. They took control of Orthodox Rus' principalities (such as Polotsk, and Kyiv).

The Finnic peoples lived in small rural communities in the easternmost Baltic regions. In addition to agriculture and slave-hunting, they made regular hunting expeditions for precious furs. Legend says that the Swedish king Eric IX launched the first crusade into Finland in the late 1150s, but the earliest reliably documented crusade against Finnish tribes was proclaimed by Pope Gregory IX in 1237. Danish crusaders conquered Estonia in 1219, but the region's political life became dominated by German knights and burghers by the middle of the century.

Western dissidents

The Gregorian Reform failed to satisfy those seeking a purer, simpler form of Christianity. The Waldensians, the first significant dissident group, praised poverty and preached in the vernacular. Increasing trade between East and West facilitated the spread of dualist ideologies, which distinguished between a pure, incorruptible God and an evil creator of the material world, rejecting mainstream Christian doctrines, especially the Incarnation. In the west, these groups became known as Cathars or Albigensians.

Catholic churchmen viewed heresy as a fundamental threat to Christianity and believers' salvation. As early as 1179, the Third Lateran Council endorsed the use of force against heretics and promised indulgences to those who fought them. However, Cathars were well integrated into southern French society, and local elites were often unwilling to act against heretical family and friends.

In 1207, Pope urged Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse to eradicate heresy from his territories. Raymond's reluctance or inability to respond led the papal legate Peter of Castelnau to excommunicated him. The legate was soon murdered, prompting Innocent to declare a crusade. Crusaders, mostly from northern France, invaded Occitania, committing brutal acts against both Cathars and Catholics. While the campaigns deepened French control over the region, it failed to eliminate heresy. That goal was eventually achieved by mendicant friars and inquisitors with support from secular authorities.

In northern Germany, a crusade targeted peasants accused of heresy and witchcraft for refusing to pay the tithe (church tax). Hungarian rulers, aiming to expand into Bosnia, launched two failed crusades against the region, allegedly home to a Cathar antipope. In contrast, the , a radical dissident group in northern Italy, were decisively eradicated by Crusaders.

Mongols

Western Europeans first became aware of the Mongol conquests during the Fifth Crusade. The Mongol Empire had emerged in 1206 when the talented military commander Temüjin was proclaimed supreme ruler as Genghis Khan. Some Mongol tribes followed the Eastern Syrian (or Nestorian) Church which had separated from mainstream Christianity in 431. Fragmented reports about of Mongol advance revived legends of a powerful eastern Christian ruler, Prester John, inspiring misplaced hopes of an ally against Islam.

The Mongols, however, were convinced they were divinely destined to conquer the world. Their devastating invasion of eastern and central Europe in 1239–40 deeply shocked Western Christendom. Pope called for a crusade, but the Mongols withdrew only after learning of the death of Genghis's successor, Ögedei Khan. In 1258, Mongol forces captured Baghdad and destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate. Seeking protection, the Cilician Armenian king Hethum I and his son-in-law, Bohemond VI of Antioch submitted to Hulegu, the Mongol (ruler of the Middle East). Mongol expansion in the region was brought to halt when the Mamluks defeated their forces at Ain Jalut in 1260.

Jews

Roman legislation under the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great and Augustine's theological works laid the foundation of the western Christians' general attitude to Judaism. Constantine recognised Judaism as a legal denomination but restricted the Jews' rights; Augustine admitted that the Jews were protected by God, but also stated that God had punished them with their dispersion for having failed to recognise Jesus as the godly appointed Messiah. The Jews' expansion in western Europe began in parallel with the economic boom that preceded the crusades. Coming from the developed Islamic economies, Jewish merchants applied advanced commercial know-how. As they could ignore the anti-usury decrees of canon law, they quickly took control of moneylending, which reinforced antisemitism.

The local rulers mainly appreciated the Jews' economic role and offered them protection, but this protection was fragile in a hostile environment. As early as 1010, distorted news of the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre triggered antisemitic attacks in the towns of Limoges, Rouen and Mainz. The western Jewish communities first faced coordinated pogroms in the Rhineland at the beginning of the First Crusade. The crusaders reportedly wanted to take vengeance on the Jews for Christ's crucifixion, but their desire to seize Jewish property is well-documented. In the east, the Jews of Jerusalem were slaughtered by the first crusaders. The Jewry of other towns (such as Tyre and Ascalon) survived, and Jewish pilgrimage to the Holy Land intensified from the , leading to the settlement of hundreds of western Jews in Palestine.

Preaching for crusades led to antisemitic attacks throughout the in the west. In 1146, the renegade monk Radulph stirred up pogroms in Rhineland, but Bernard of Clairvaux ordered his imprisonment. In 1189 and 1190, the mob attacked Jews in English towns. Antisemitism escalated to a new level with the spread of unfounded gossip about the ritual murder of Christian children by Jews from .

Women

Women were closely associated with the crusading movement since its inception. Popes discouraged women from joining a crusade but female servants always accompanied the armies. Among them, washerwomen received special papal authorisation from the start. Whereas a woman needed her father's or husband's permission to be a fully fledged crusader, men could take a crusade vow without their wives' consent from 1209. High-ranking female crusaders sometimes led their own contingents or conducted important diplomatic negotiations. In the Baltic, the active participation of female settlers in the defence of towns and villages is well documented. Sex workers also travelled with crusading armies although they were often expelled as an act of purification.

Gendered prejudice is well documented both among the crusaders and their enemies. Christian chroniclers mainly emphasized the women's supportive tasks, such as bringing water or stone missiles to male warriors, but rarely mentioned fighting women. In contrast, Muslim and Byzantine authors often wrote of armed female crusaders, presenting them as a sign of barbarism. Muslim writers also condemned the relative freedom women enjoyed in Frankish societies, considering it as a gateway to debauchery. Crusaders were expected to refrain from sexual activities for penitential purposes, which could lead to the banishment of women (including wives) from their camp before major encounters. Women whose husband or father had left for a crusade were exposed to attacks by greedy kinsmen and neighbours. Crusaders sometimes entered into a formal agreement with a kinsman or church institution to secure their wives' and daughters' protection for the period of their absence. In other cases, crusaders charged their wife or mother with the administration of their lands.

Raids, both by Christian and Muslim troops, into enemy territories often targeted women, and after battles and sieges, the victors frequently captured the women (and children) of the enemy camp. The First Crusade was an exemption: both Christian and Jewish sources emphasise that the crusaders often massacred the entire population of conquered towns. In the Baltic, the '' Livonian Rhymed Chronicle'' praised the massacres of pagan women and children as godly-sanctioned acts. Captured women were habitually raped. Women of noble background were held for ransom, although their price was usually lower than the price of men of their rank. Women who were not ransomed were enslaved or married off.

Because of frequent death of armed males, fiefs were frequently inherited by women in the crusader states, but female fiefholders were expected to marry. Women were not excluded from inheriting the throne either: four queens ruled Jerusalem between 1186 and 1228. In Frankish Greece, the wives of the Achaean barons (who had been captured in the Battle of Pelagonia) assembled into the " Parliament of Dames" in 1261 to discuss the terms of a peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire on their absent husband's behalf.

Crusading in practise

Declaration and promotion

Most crusades were proclaimed by the pope as only the Holy See had the authority to grant crusade indulgences. The call for a new crusade was typically included in a papal bull which listed the crusade's causes, and contained an explicit appeal for participation in addition to the list of the spiritual and secular prerogatives offered to the participants. Pope gave permission to the Dominicans to preach crusades in the Baltic without a specific papal authorisation, and his successors expanded this privilege to the Franciscans and the Teutonic priests. Crusade encyclicals were circulated in all Catholic churches from the time of Pope Alexander III.

The crusaders were promoted by clerics. High-ranking prelates with legatine powers mainly preached to aristocratic audiences at important secular or church assemblies. Preaching at the towns and villages was disorganised before Pope set up special executive boards to organise the crusades. His successors adopted a less formalised approach. From the early , mainly mendicant friars (who were trained for missionary activities) were responsible for preaching crusades at local level. By the end of the century, priests often used handbooks completed by the Dominican friar Humbert of Romans and other successful crusade propagators.

Taking the cross

People who decided to depart for a crusade made a solemn vow in public. During the same occasion or at a separate ceremony, a cloth or silk cross was sewed on their mantle or robe. The cross was typically red, but occasionally other colours were used. By "taking the cross", the crusaders indicated their determination to follow Christ in accordance with his words: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me". The symbol resonated with the 11th-century spiritual movement known as ('imitation of Christ') which promoted an active apostolic life. Some crusaders also received the traditional symbols of pilgrims—a pouch and a walking staff. Crusaders had to wear their cross until they returned from the crusade, and church authorities censured crusaders who "had taken their crosses off" without completing their crusade vow. The suspension, commutation or cancellation of a vow could be achieved only under exceptional circumstances, such as physical or mental weakness, or impoverishment. The wearing of the cross became the crusaders' most important symbol: they were known as ('signed with the cross') in Latin from the late .

Privileges

Secular privileges offered to the first crusaders are poorly documented. According to a collection of canon law, they and their goods were "under the Truce of God"; similarly, Guibert of Nogent says that Pope Urban granted papal protection to the crusaders, their wives, children, and property. Years later, Urban's successor, Pope Paschal II ordered the French prelates to ensure that returning crusaders would regain their property as Urban had "ordained in a synodal declaration". In 1107, the canon lawyer Ivo of Chartres still described the law protecting the crusaders' goods as "new". The crusaders' privileges were spelled out at the First Lateran Council which placed their "houses and households" and all their property under ecclesiastic protection and ordered the excommunication of those who "shall presume to appropriate or make off with these". This was a (or automatic) sanction, coming into force without a formal trial. Pope prohibited any legal actions against the crusaders and exempted them of interest payment on their debts. Papal protection was not always effective: Richard I of England was imprisoned in Austria during his return from the Third Crusade.

Finances

Crusades, underlines the historian Simon Lloyd, must have been "crippingly expensive" expeditions even if the costs of individual campaigns are rarely known. According to scholarly estimations, a simple knight had to spend more than his four years' revenues on a crusade. To raise funds, wealthy crusaders often sold commodities (typically timber) or granted privileges to towns or rural communities under their rule for a lump sum. The sale of inherited estates was less common, but family lands were frequently mortgaged, or ceded in vifgage to the creditor (whereby profits from the land were deducted from the loan). Crusaders often received gifts or loans from their kinsmen, feudal lords, or friends. In Iberia, Muslim rulers paid regular tribute to the Christian kings, allowing them to reward their vassals with magnanimous stipends.

Taxation became an important source of expenditures on crusading in the second half of the . A special tax for the defence of the Holy Land was first levied both in France and England in 1166. In 1188, the "Saladin tithe"—a ten percent extraordinary tax on income and property—was introduced in both countries in preparation for the Third Crusade, but noncompliance was common, especially in France. The taxation of church institutions' revenues for crusading purposes was ordered for the first time in 1199 by Pope . The methods of this tax's assessment and collection were spelled out in a papal bull by Pope Gregory X in 1274, but the clergy made several attempts to avoid taxation. Donations for crusades were collected in chests placed in churches specifically for this purpose from 1199. In 1213, Pope created a radically new method of fund raising by authorising everyody, save monks, to take a crusade vow, but also allowing them to redeem it for a cash payment.

Warfare and military architecture

Most crusades' command was divided and uncertain, and desertion from the crusader armies was not unusual, but the crusaders' morale was often boosted by visions, processions, and relics. Raids and battles were significant elements of warfare in both western Europe and the Middle East, but the siege of fortified urban centres, a normal aspect of Levantine warfare, was a novelty for most crusaders. Raids were mainly made for booty and destruction, or in preparation for major invasions. The crusaders tended to avoid pitched battles because a heavy defeat could cause fatal losses both in manpower and land. Siege warfare entailed the intensive use of stone-hurling siege engines, siege towers and battering rams. The Muslim defenders often used Greek fire, but the crusaders learnt how to prevent conflagration with hides soaked in vinegar.

The knights, who made up the central element of crusader armies, were heavily armoured horsemen. They were, with the words of the historian John France, the "masters of close-quarter warfare". In the east, they mainly faced mounted archers, so they needed the assistance of infantry, particularly bowmen and spearmen. The Franks also employed native light cavalrymen (known as Turcopoles) to harass and capture enemy troops. In the north, the Teutonic Knights hired converted Prussians to raid the pagan natives' settlements. Spanish raiders mainly fought with daggers, short lances and darts. Naval force for Levantine crusades was mainly provided by Italian city-states and the Byzantines. Egypt was the only Muslim state maintaining a fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, but the small Egyptian ships could rarely challenge the westerners' maritime supremacy. After Emperor 's failed overland crusade, all crusades were delivered by fleets. In the north, the large Scandinavian and German merchant ships, able to carry , could easily defeat the Baltic peoples' raiding-crafts and long-ships.

In all lands conquered by the crusaders, castles were built to serve both as military bases and administrative centres. These new castles often combined western European technologies and local traditions. In the Levant, Norman-style fortified towers were initially built, but the Franks quickly adopted the local form of walled courtyards. This design was later developed into concentric castles with a double defensive system, able to resist sieges for several months. In Phillips' opinion, spur castles "offer the most spectacular examples of Frankish military architecture"; built on rocky hilltops, they were heavily fortified with towers and a keep. In Iberia, more than 2,000 castles were built on promontories along the frontiers, allowing their garrisons to constantly monitor the movement of enemy forces. The Teutonic Knights initially built blockhouses to defend their Baltic lands, but they began erecting stone towers by , and stone was replaced by the less expensive and more available brick as the main building material in the .

Military orders

Tyerman concludes that the military orders "provided crusading's most original contribution to the institutions of medieval Christendom". These were religious orders following monastic rules but destined to fight for fellow Christians. Their origin is inseparable from the militant Catholicism of the late . The first military order was initiated by the French knight Hugues de Payens and his companions. They took the three monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, forming a confraternity for the protection of pilgrims in 1119. Their order received official recognition first in 1120. They became known as Knights Templar after King Baldwin II of Jerusalem granted them chambers in the former Al-Aqsa Mosque, popularly associated with the ancient Temple of Solomon.

The idea of Christian warrior-monks was a revolutionary novelty but corresponded to contemporaneous chivalric and ecclesiastic ideals. As early as , Bernard of Clairvaux celebrated the Templars as representatives of a "new knighthood". Warrior-monks perfectly served the interests of communities living in the borderlands of Latin Christianity, thus the Templars were quickly imitated by other groups. In Iberia, the military orders of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcántara and Aviz were established with royal support before 1180. In the Baltic, the Sword Brothers and Order of Dobrzyń were founded by local bishops, but both was merged into the Teutonic Order before the 1230s. In the Holy Land, the militarisation of nursing confraternities led to the formation of military orders—the Knights Hospitaller, the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of Saint Thomas, and the Lazarists.

The members of the military orders were organised into functional categories. The knight-brothers and the were armed monks; the priest-brothers were responsible for spiritual care. Noblemen could temporarily join the order for spiritual; other laypeople supported the order with donations. The two most powerful orders, the Templars and Hospitallers, held estates all over Latin Christendom, and developed into autonomous international organisation under the leadership of their own elected grand masters. Their networks of convents enabled them to transfer goods and cash (even cash deposited with them) between distant regions, and the Templars became key actors of money markets.

Criticism

Opponents of the Gregorian Reform (such as the scholar Sigebert of Gembloux) condemned the concept of penitential warfare from the start, but their voice lost in the euphoria raised by the successful First Crusade. Mainstream criticism of crusading initially focused on certain aspects of the movement, like the risks of a crusader's absence from their home. The existence of military orders was unacceptable for those who regarded monastic life incompatible with knighthood. Millenarian thinkers, like Joachim of Fiore, regarded the crusades as phenomena of a passing period, stating that the Muslims' voluntary conversion to Christianity would introduce a new age sometime soon.

The geographical expansion of the crusades attracted a new wave of criticism because many thought that crusades against Christians in Europe distracted attention from the Holy Land. Some Occitan troubadours went as far as associating the northern French crusaders invading Occitania with the Muslims menacing the Holy Land. The complete failure of the crusades for the Holy Land after the prompted the chronicler Salimbene di Adam to state that attempts to recover the Palestinian holy places did not enjoy divine support. Others argued that the Christians were unable to overcome the Muslims in the Levant due to demographic disparity, or emphasised that the crusades prevented effective proselytism among Muslims. The Dominican friar Humbert of Romans compiled a whole study against similar arguments in 1274.

Legacy

The crusading movement left an enduring legacy. It was a significant influence on western culture in the late medieval period and left an historical impact on the Islamic world. The impact touched nearly every aspect of European life. Historians have debated whether the Latin States created by the movement in the Eastern Mediterranean were the first examples of European colonialism. The ''Outremer'' is the name that is often used for these states. This translates to ''Europe Overseas''. In mid-19thcentury historiography this became a focus for European nationalism and associated with European colonialism. Historians have contested this view. The Latin settlements did not align neatly with the typical definition of a colony. They were neither directly controlled or exploited by a homeland. A different definition, of a religious colony, describes a territory conquered and settled with religious motivation. This territory maintains close contact with its homeland, share the same religious views and require support in military and financial terms. The polities of Venetian Greece was a better match to the traditional model of colonialism. These were carved out of the Byzantine Empire as a result of the crusading movement and the Fourth Crusade The republic of Venice had a political and economic stake in these territories to such a degree that the region attracted settlers that would otherwise migrated to the Latin East. In this way its success actually weakened the crusader states.

The crusading movement created a flourishing system of trade in the Mediterranean. New routes were created to serve the Outremer with Genoa and Venice planting profitable trading outposts across the region. Many historians argue that the increasingly frequent contact between the Latin Christian and Islamic cultures was a positive. It was foundational in the progress of European civilization and the Renaissance. Closer contact with the Muslim and Byzantine worlds enabled access for western European scholars to classical Greek and Roman texts. This led to the rediscovery of pre-Christian philosophy, science, and medicine. It is difficult to identify exactly the source of cultural interchange. The increase of knowledge of Islamic culture was the result of contact that stretched the breadth of the Mediterranean Sea.

The movement allowed the papacy to strengthen its leadership within the Latin Church. The clergy became inured to violence, while the church developed closer links with feudalism, feudal structures and military institutions. The Medieval Inquisition, along with the Dominican and military orders, were all institutionalized. A catalyst for the Reformation was the growing opposition to developments in the use of indulgences. Relations between western Christians, the Greeks and the Muslims were also soured by the behaviour of the crusaders. These differences became an enduring barrier between the Latin, the Orthodox and Islamic worlds. The crusading movement had a reputation of a defeated aggressor and unification of the Christian churches became problematic. Political Islam makes historical parallels, provoking paradigms of jihad and struggle. Arab nationalism looked on the movement as an example of Western imperialism. Thinkers, politicians, and historians in the Islamic world draw an equivalence with more recent events like the League of Nations French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, mandates to govern Syria, Lebanon, Mandatory Palestine, Palestine, and the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. An opposing analogy has developed in Western world right-wing circles. Here, Christianity is considered to be under a similar existential Islamic religious and demographic threat. The result is Criticism of Islam, anti-Islamic rhetoric and symbols. This provides an argument for a contest with a religious foe. Thomas F. Madden argues that these modern tensions are the result of constructed view developed during the 19thcentury by the colonial powers. This in turn led to the rise of Arab nationalism. For Madden, the crusading movement is a defensive and solely medieval phenomenon.

Historiography

Almost immediately, the First Crusade provoked literary examination. Initially this served as propaganda for the crusading movement and was based on a few separate but related works. One of these, (literally 'the deeds of the Franks'). It created a template for later works based on papal, northern French, and Benedictines, Benedictine ideas. It considered military success or failure entirely to God's will in its promotion of violent action.

Albert of Aachen produced contrasting vernacular stories of adventure. At this point the early chroniclers concentrated on the moral lessons that could be taken from the crusades. This reinforced normative moral and cultural positions. Academic crusade historian Paul Chevedden argued that the early accounts were already an anachronism. The writers were writing with the knowledge of the unexpected success of the First Crusade. For Chevedden, more can be learned about how the crusading movement was viewed in the 11thcentury in the works of Urban II who died ignorant of the crusade's success. Albert's adventure stories were developed and extended in turn by William of Tyre before the end of the 12thcentury. William documented the early history of the military Crusader States. In this he illustrated the tension between secular and wikt:providential, providential motivation.

In the 16thcentury the Reformation and the Ottoman expansion shaped opinion. Protestant Martyrology, martyrologist John Foxe writing in his 1566 work ''History of the Turks'' blamed the sins of the Catholic Church for the failure of the crusades. He also criticized the use of crusading against those he considered had maintained the faith, such as the Albigensians and Waldensians. The Lutheran scholar Matthew Dresser (1536–1607) went further. He praised for their faith, but considered that Urban II was motivated by his conflict with Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Emperor Henry IV. Dresser considered that the flaw in the crusading movement was that the idea of restoring the physical holy places was "detestable superstition". One of the first to number the crusades was the French Catholic lawyer Étienne Pasquier. His suggestion was that there were six. In his work he highlighted the failures. In addition he raised the damage that religious conflict had inflicted on France and the church. The key points were the victims of papal aggression, the sale of indulgences, abuses in the church, corruption, and conflicts at home.

Age of Enlightenment philosophers and historians such as David Hume, Voltaire and Edward Gibbon used crusading as a conceptual tool to critique religion, civilization and cultural mores. For them the positives effects of crusading, such as the increasing liberty that municipalities were able to purchase from feudal lords, were only by-products. This view was then criticized in the 19thcentury by Crusade enthusiasts as being unnecessarily hostile to, and ignorant of, the crusades. Alternatively, Claude Fleury and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz proposed that the crusades were one stage in the improvement of European civilization; that paradigm was further developed by the Rationalism, Rationalists.

The idea that the crusades were an important part of national history and identity continued to evolve. In scholarly literature, the term "holy war" was replaced by the neutral German and French . Gibbon followed Thomas Fuller in dismissing the concept that the crusades were a legitimate defence, as they were disproportionate to the threat presented; Palestine was an objective, not because of reason but because of fanaticism and superstition. William Robertson (historian), William Robertson expanded on Fleury in a new, empirical, objective approach, placing crusading in a narrative of progress towards modernity. The cultural consequences of growth in trade, the rise of the Italian cities and progress are elaborated in his work. In this he influenced his student Walter Scott. Much of the popular understanding of the Crusades derives from the 19th-century novels of Scott and the French histories by Joseph François Michaud. Michaud's viewpoint provoked Muslim attitudes. Previously, the crusading movement had aroused little interest among Islamic and Arabic scholars. This changed with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the penetration of European power into the Eastern Mediterrarean.

In the 2001 article "The Historiography of the Crusades", Giles Constable attempted to categorize what is meant by "Crusade" into four areas of contemporary crusade study. His view was that ''Traditionalists'' such as Hans Eberhard Mayer are concerned with where the Crusades were aimed, ''Pluralists'' such as Jonathan Riley-Smith concentrate on how the Crusades were organized, ''Popularists'' including Paul Alphandery and Etienne Delaruelle focus on the popular groundswells of religious fervour, and ''Generalists'', such as Ernst-Dieter Hehl focus on the phenomenon of Latin holy wars. The historian Thomas F. Madden argues that modern tensions are the result of a constructed view of the Crusades created by colonial powers in the 19thcentury and transmitted into Arab nationalism. For him the Crusades are a medieval phenomenon in which the crusaders were engaged in a defensive war on behalf of their co-religionists.

The Byzantines harboured a negative perspective on holy warfare, failing to grasp the concept of the Crusades and finding them repugnant. Although some initially embraced Westerners due to a common Christianity, their trust soon waned. With a pragmatic approach, the Byzantines prioritized strategic locations such as Antioch over sentimental objectives like Jerusalem. They couldn't comprehend the merging of pilgrimage and warfare. The advocacy for infidel eradication by St. Bernard and the militant role of the Templars would deeply shock them. Suspicions arose among the Byzantines that Westerners aimed for imperial conquest, leading to growing animosity. Despite occasionally using the term "holy war" in historical contexts, Byzantine conflicts were not inherently holy but perceived as just, defending the empire and Christian faith. War, to the Byzantines, was justified solely for the defence of the empire, in contrast to Muslim expansionist ideals and Western knights' notion of holy warfare to glorify Christianity.

Scholars like Carole Hillenbrand assert that within the broader context of Muslim historical events, the Crusades were considered a marginal issue when compared to the collapse of the Caliphate, the Mongol invasions, and the rise of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, supplanting Arab rule. Arab historians, influenced by historical opposition to Turkish control over their homelands, adopted a Western perspective on the Crusades. Syrian Christians proficient in Arabic played a vital role by translating French histories into Arabic. The first modern biography of Saladin was authored by the Ottoman Turk Namık Kemal in 1872, while the Egyptian Sayyid Ali al-Hariri produced the initial Arabic history of the Crusades in response to Kaiser Wilhelm II's visit to Jerusalem in 1898. The visit triggered a renewed interest in Saladin, who had previously been overshadowed by more recent leaders like Baybars. The reinterpretation of Saladin as a hero against Western imperialism gained traction among nationalist Arabs, fuelled by anti-imperialist sentiment. The intersection of history and contemporary politics is evident in the development of ideas surrounding jihad and Arab nationalism. Historical parallels between the Crusades and modern political events, such as the establishment of Israel in 1948, have been drawn. In contemporary Western discourse, right-wing perspectives have emerged, viewing Christianity as under threat analogous to the Crusades, using crusader symbols and anti-Islamic rhetoric for propaganda purposes. Madden argues that Arab nationalism absorbed a constructed view of the Crusades created by colonial powers in the 19th century, contributing to modern tensions. Madden suggests that the crusading movement, from a medieval perspective, engaged in a defensive war on behalf of co-religionists.

See also

* History of the Jews and the Crusades
* List of principal crusaders
* List of Crusader castles
* Women in the Crusades
* Criticism of crusading

Notes

References

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{{Authority control

Crusades,