According to this book, the First Crusade was launched at a moment when no particular Muslim aggression of note was going on. It wasn't a response to Muslims taking Jerusalem, because the Muslims had already held the city for over 200 years at this point. There was sporadic fighting between the Byzantine Romans and the Seljuk Turks, but that wasn't any greater in scale than the territorial squabbles of kingdoms in Europe at the time.
According to the book, the REAL reason for the crusades was to give knights a way to have their sins forgiven. At the time, the Church taught that ALL violence, even justified violence, was inherently sinful and this was a cause of terrible anxiety among the warrior-class of Europe, since they feared they would be damned to Hell for their profession. So the concept of a "crusade" was created to give the Knights a way to achieve salvation. The Pope said that crusaders would have their sins completely forgiven if they died while defending Christendom, which was a very attractive proposition to a class of people who were extremely anxious about their position in the afterlife. The Pope was aware of this deep anxiety within the Knights of Europe, and he exploited it as a way of reasserting Papal authority.
In other words, the initial spark for the Crusades had almost nothing to do with Muslim aggression, and much more to do with the spiritual anxiety of knights in Europe, who yearned for a way to achieve salvation without renouncing the violence that their jobs depended on.
IIRC there was an idea of "The Pope's Peace" or something that was agreed to in the 1040's or so that was supposed to stop the petty warfare in western Europe but it was breaking down completely by the time of the first crusdade
Samuel Russell
That's another thing the book mentions. The Church had been trying to get the various Christian kingdoms of Europe to stop fighting each other for centuries. Part of the impetus for the First Crusade was "okay, they'll never stop fighting each other, no matter how much we beg them to stop, so let's give them an external threat to unite against."
Nicholas Smith
>There was sporadic fighting between the Byzantine Romans and the Seljuk Turks, but that wasn't any greater in scale than the territorial squabbles of kingdoms in Europe at the time. >Lost almost all Anatolia Pic is the region in 1081, the Greeks spent the next 10 years fighting horse nomads and asshole Normans. They didn't have enough men to retake Anatolia so they asked the West for help.
Don't confuse why individuals decided to go with why the whole thing happened.
Asher Morris
Didn't Alexios only ask for a couple thousand calvary?
Jack Phillips
'And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.'
Adrian James
According to the book, the Byzantine Romans were only expecting a small number of knights to show up, though. They weren't asking for a crusade. That was the Pope's doing.
Christopher Garcia
Yeah he didn't expect as large a response as he got but its an outright lie to say Christians weren't suffering in the East. It should be noted that the Crusaders did capture cities in Asia that were formerly Byzantine on their way to Jerusalem. Their assistance in the region was huge and allowed the Greeks to recover a lot.
Jonathan James
>but its an outright lie to say Christians weren't suffering in the East. I think the point is more that this was a lot less of a factor than internal politics in the West
Christian Edwards
I don't think that the thousands of people who went on crusade did so with the expressed intention of advancing secular authority.
Xavier Lee
maybe not for the crusaders themselves, but for the people who decided to call it and organized it?
Xavier Morgan
The book doesn't really say that Christians weren't suffering in the East, it just says that there wasn't really any particular Muslim aggression of note going on at the time of the First Crusade. In other words, the Muslims weren't making some big push into Europe. They lacked the political unity to even make that a possibility. However, the book openly concedes that the Crusades could just as easily be read as an attempt to reclaim land which had once been Christian, albeit over a century previous.
Parker Bailey
Christians suffering in the east is mentioned in all of the versions of Urbans speeches. Cynical people will say they did it for the forgiveness of sins and plunder just as cynical people today would say people that volunteer as fire fighters are doing it for social credit points and not because they want to help people.
I'm sure there were assholes that went on the Crusade but there is just as much chance of truly kind hearted people going.
Easton Long
see
Christian Bailey
Apparently it was part of Urbans plan to force the Byzantines to accept the Holy roman emperor as an equal, not an imposter
Anthony Wood
>I don't think that the thousands of people who went on crusade did so with the expressed intention of advancing secular authority.
No, they did it to save their souls from eternal damnation. That's what this was really about.
Jayden Barnes
>Cynical people will say they did it for the forgiveness of sins
I don't understand how that's "cynical." That's literally what the Pope said. Go fight the Muslims and your soul will be purified. That was a VERY powerful attraction for medieval knights, who feared that they'd be damned to Hell for engaging in warfare. The Crusades gave them a way to be warriors and at the same time serve God. No longer did they have to choose between their job and their faith.
Carter Harris
The plenary indulgence was a significant motivator for the knights to fight, but I wouldn't discount the significant psychological factor of Christendom. Just as many people today conceive of themselves as proud citizens of a nation, medievals were proud constituents of Christendom. >It wasn't a response to Muslims taking Jerusalem, because the Muslims had already held the city for over 200 years at this point. Yes, but very different Muslims. The Muslim world was as politically diverse as Christendom. The Turks really did attack Christian pilgrims and Christian holy sites. The Turks did not know what the Arabs had long ago figured out: Jerusalem's biggest asset was its pilgrims. >There was sporadic fighting between the Byzantine Romans and the Seljuk Turks, but that wasn't any greater in scale than the territorial squabbles of kingdoms in Europe at the time. Now either my understanding is wrong or the author/OP is extremely misrepresenting the situation in the 11th century. The Turks were crushing the Byzantines and seizing Asia minor. That was a huge turn of events in the near east. Thomas Asbridge looks like a reputable scholar, so I feel hesitant to dismiss him out of hand. For what it's worth I learned everything I know about the crusades from Thomas Madden.
Kayden Johnson
Asbridge only says that because its a popular objection to the 'crusaders were defensive wars' but he quickly points out that while Islam wasn't on a rampage like it was when it first came on the scene the Muslims had been pressuring Byzantium enough with its constant max 10 years of peace cylcle that it was fianlly starting to feel threatened enough to ask the Pope for aid.
LITERALLY the impetus for the crusades was Byzantium asking for help.
This isn't really more far fetched than Shias asking Abbassids for aid. Its was a sign of desperation.
sorry the idea that the Pope created a Paul Krugman alien threat to bring peace between minor nobles in europe is retarded. The papacy itself was scheming against minor nobles.
Jordan Murphy
The argument the Christian would have no claim or attachment to the lost Holy land becasue it was 200 years earlier is stupid.
Poland, Austria, Germany, Britian, Netherlands, Belgium, and almsot every other country has done this. Especially if you look at paris 1919. Claims for new borders were based off of extremely old claims some even 500 years old.
Its an argument thats out there so he mentions it but he doesn't really take it very seriously.
Dylan Miller
>sorry the idea that the Pope created a Paul Krugman alien threat to bring peace between minor nobles in europe is retarded It was definitely a convenient solution >The papacy itself was scheming against minor nobles. how so?
Benjamin Collins
The book doesn't even say that the Crusaders were wrong. It just covers both points of view. The Muslim point of view is that suddenly thousands of Christian knights were pouring into lands that had been Muslim for over a century. And wars rarely have just 1 singular cause. Yes, the Byzantine Romans asked for help, that was the "spark." But the bigger and more interesting question is why did so many answer the call? The answer is that the warrior-class of Europe felt a constant disconnect between peaceful commandments of Christianity and the violent nature of their work. They feared damnation for their violent ways. The Crusades gave them a way to purify themselves, without having to renounce their warrior status. It's very easy to see why such a thing would be attractive.
Kayden Watson
The First Crusade started with the Byzantine Empire asking for aid against the Turks. So the church sent soldiers and they took back Jerusalem. The crusaders were supposed to hand over control of Jerusalem to the Byzantines, but for some reason they didn't do that.
Hunter Adams
>Catholicism giving anything at all to Orthodoxy besides a smuggie I'm thinking that western europe saw it as an excuse. Either that, or they saw it as a valid reason, rather than a petty excuse.
Daniel Adams
Me neither. Cynical is excuse for a land grab.
Leo Jackson
In a book by the french historian Georges Minois, there is another explanation for the begining of the first crusade, and it is much less impressive than any other.
In 1099, you must understand that the Pope wasn't living in Rome. There was still the fallout of the Gregorian reform, and the conflit between the Emperor and the Pope for the difference between temporal and spiritual power. This conflict led to war, the pope being exiled, and then a group of normans led by Robert Guiscard sacked the city, raping and destroying everything in their path. When Urban II was Emperor, he was stuck in southern France. And southern France, contrary to the north, was a place of feudal strife, infighting, terrible conflicts that plagued the place. We lost the original speech of Urban II, and all of the speeches you can find online are actually post-recreations. So, for Georges Minois, Urban II began the call of the Crusade only to weed the region out of their troublesome fighters ; But the call went everywhere in France, and soon the Crusade became a generalized movement.
Elijah Lewis
*was Pope
Brody Mitchell
a case of re-directing rambunctious normans?
Aaron Roberts
Part of it was for salvation but another part was a genuine fear of muslim aggression. And by muslin aggression I don't necessarily mean Islam sweeping through North Africa and Spain as it had a few centuries prior but instead the Seljuk's prohibiting Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Up until that point the Christian states of Europe were at least able to tolerate the city being in Muslim hands but to have no access to it completely was too much. >The crusaders were supposed to hand over control of Jerusalem to the Byzantines, but for some reason they didn't do that. By the time the Crusade reached the holy land they Crusaders believed that since they fought for the cities and lands they captured with little help from Byzantium that it was they who deserved to rule these lands.
Kevin Rodriguez
>they thought the byzantines didnt help Exept the byzantines DID help with theur smaller yet more experinced force. Even if they didnt the crusaders already gave alexius an oath to gice back ALL the land that they get.
Brody Rodriguez
Well for a start, you need to be able to differentiate between the reasons why the crusade was called and the reasons why the crusaders responded to the call.
It could easily be argued that the calling of the First Crusade was a response to Muslim aggression in the East against the Christian Byzantines. Obviously there are a lot of other complex factors to do with the Pope and the Western Church and so on, but at its core the First Crusade only occurred because of Muslim aggression.
Henry James
>reason for the crusades was to give knights a way to have their sins forgiven.
Why does this sound so familiar... Which religion has had martyrdom as a tenet for over a thousand years again?
Alexander Torres
in 1091 the Seljuq Turks and Pechenegs pushed to Constantinople, though they did not take the city, most of Anatolia remained under Turkish control besides a few coastal holdouts, the crusades began a mere 4 years later
Benjamin Murphy
Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Aztecs, Greeks...
Camden Scott
It was also useful remove focus away from pope vs hre emperor fighting and strenghten the authority of church.
Thomas Rogers
>It wasn't a response to Muslims taking Jerusalem, because the Muslims had already held the city for over 200 years at this point.
It took the Catholic Church almost a hundred years to organize "Vatican 2" after the First Vatican Council was suspended due to the outbreak of the FrancoPrussian war.
Do you seriously think it was easier to get an entire CRUSADE organized and up and running in the 11th century?
Mason Kelly
>written by; Thomas ASSbridge Says it all imo
Andrew Ross
No the KKKrusades were waged by white brutal imperialists out of pure greed and hatred for dark skin tones of Muslims.
Connor Lee
What are the best books on the First and Third Crusade Veeky Forums?
Hudson Morgan
Its in the book. The papacy was constantly squabblign to get control fo italy and free it from the HRE.
Justin King
asbridge is actually a good starter. He plays it fair and presents all the opinions without really playing favorites.
The crusades simply were an unprovoked aggressive invasion of the middle east, anyone who claims it's some defensive war is a politically motivated christfag or stormfag.
Oliver Cox
I have the same opinions with the book, for 3 years I wrote about this subject, on /pol/ before his was created, and on other imageboard sites.
Christian Conservative Europeans push their 21st century ideolgoy of defending EVROPA and stopping the foreign hordes from invading, in reality if you read the primary sources most crusaders were moved by jerusalem, by jesus, heaven etc i.e. religion.
If they wanted to halt muslim agression they would focus on turks rather than holy lands, If they wanted to defend or reclaim their homelands they could go to spain, where ummayads were in disarray, or to sicily where muslims were on the retreat
but no they went straight to some city that last seen a christian governors 400 years ago
because that city was holy, it was jerusalem. Though I stopped debating this shit with others, people will not stop pushing romanticism, natinoalism, or any late modern ideology to past, and correcting others on cartoon boards is tiring.
If you wanted to be convinced go read the primary sources. Esspecially check eccleiastical letters concerning crusades.
Joshua Allen
Didn't Urban literally say why he was calling for one, IE. to stop moslem bandits killing pilgrims to the holy land, which the Byzantine Emperor had talked to some Caliph about but nothing had come of it and it continued.
