Causes of crusades

Finding real reasons for the crusades is a complex enterprise because they are mixed with fear of the Islam expansion and the will of Christianity to control the political power. What we know is that “Muslims rule over the holy land stood as a challenge to the Christian faith.”⁵⁴⁶ Their army captured the holy land with lightning speed. Muslims conquered Damascus in 635, Antioch in 636, Jerusalem in 638, Caesarea in 640, and Alexandria in 642.

In the beginning Muslim leaders did not cause problems to Christians because most of them were tolerant of Christian presence among them. The situation started changing in 1009 when the Caliph Egypt Al-Hakim (996-1021) destroyed the church of the Holy Sepulcher. Jews and Christians were forced to wear five pound wooden crosses around their necks. Muslims did not like Al-Hakim or the nuisances, he caused. He was murdered in 1021.⁵⁴⁷

The direct cause known is the massacre of three thousand Christian pilgrims when Jerusalem was taken by the Muslim Turks in 1065. This was unacceptable to the Pope who was the head of the State of Rome and other Christian believers who sanctified the city of Jerusalem as a sacred and holy place of pilgrim.⁵⁴⁸

The crusades background “was set when the Seljuk Turks decisively defeated the Byzantine army in 1071 and cut off Christian access to Jerusalem.”⁵⁴⁹ This was a shame for Roman Catholic Church and all of its members. “The Byzantine emperor, Alexius Commenus I sent a letter to the Pope asking for help for his struggle against the Seljuq Turks, who had taken most of Asia Minor from him.”⁵⁵⁰ He asked aid and support not only to the Pope, but also to western Christian leaders to engage a crusade that would liberate the holy land from Muslim invaders.

Crusades-were-simply-a-series-of-war-crimes-committed-by-the-Christians/1/>, 22nd September 2012.

546 Abbijit Nayak, Crusade violence: Understanding and overcoming the impact of mission among Muslims, in International Rewiew of Mission, vol.97 No586/587, July ,October 2008, p.274.

547 Ibid.

548 First Crusade,< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade>, 04th October 2012.

549 Peter J.H. Barrat, Abstentis: St Peter, the disputed site of his burial place and the apostolic succession, Published by DeliaBooks, USA, 2014, p.110.

550 Pierre Parisien, Blood and the Covenant: The historical consequences of the contract with God, Trafford Publishing, USA, 2010, p.172.

Thomas Asbridge, a scholar of medievalist at the University of London, “argues that the First crusade was Pope Urban II's attempt to expand the power of the church, and reunite the churches of Rome and Constantinople, which had been in schism since 1054.”⁵⁵¹ This can be confirmed by the fact that Jerusalem was not given back to the Byzantine empire after the first crusade.

The second reason of the first crusade is the religious conviction of the crusaders. In the Middle Age there was a “spirit of religious reform that had led to the Investiture Controversy had been accompanied by an increase in popular spirituality.”⁵⁵² This religious context encouraged people to be enrolled in crusades. “The most ambitious advocate of church reform was Pope Gregory VII between 1073-1085. He claimed unprecedented power for the papacy; he held the idea of creating a Christian commonwealth under papal control.”⁵⁵³

People no longer accepted their religion passively; they wanted to actively participate and do something themselves in honor their god.⁵⁵⁴ This led to the feeling of rescuing the holy city from the sacrileges of the “infidels”. This was the reason which changed the pilgrim into a war.

Religious conviction was one of the main causes of the first crusades.⁵⁵⁵

In the Middle Age, the Bible in the culture and in mentalities was very fundamental. The Bible was the complete manual of a man's life. That influence was universal and included all social layers. The culture was a Christian culture transmitted by stories and sermons but also by the iconographic representations of the glass windows and sculptures. Jerusalem, like Nazareth and Bethlehem, was therefore, a name known of all men in that period of the Middle Age. ⁵⁵⁶

551 First Crusade,< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade>, 04th October 2012.

552 Lynn Harry Nelson, First crusade, < http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/first_crusade.html> , 14th August 2016.

553 Also Pope Gregory VII claimed that the Roman pontiff alone is rightly called universal, that he alone has the power to depose and rein state bishops, that he alone may use the imperial insignia, that all princes shall kiss the foot of the Pope alone, that he has the power to depose emperors, that he can judged by no one, that no one can be regarded as catholic who does not agree with the Roman church, that he has the power to absolve subjects from their oath of fealty to wicked rulers. See World History Center, <http://history-

world.org/midchurchhigh.htm>, 05th October 2012,

quoted M.W. Baldwin, Chrsitianity through the thirteenth century, New York: Harper&Row, 1970, pp. 182- 183.

554 Lynn Harry Nelson, First crusade, < http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/first_crusade.html> , 14th August 2016.

555 Causes of the First crusade, <http://socyberty.com/history/causes-of-the-first-crusade/>, 14th September 2012.

556 Edgar Weber, Croisade d’hier, djihad d’aujourd’hui, Ed. Cerf, Paris, 1989, p. 192-193

To understand the importance given Christian religion,

The emotion can be comparable to what would be felt by the traditional Muslims today if the city of Mecca fell into the hands of non-Muslims. Not only the heart of the world would be reached, but the emotional mobilization of such loss would justify the use of intensive violence to reestablish the lost order. The loss of Jerusalem had an echo in west no as the disappearance of a foreign city, but as the one city which was the cradle of the Christian faith, judged as the only one truthful at that time and a symbol of a whole system. The church was born in Jerusalem.⁵⁵⁷

Edgar Weber asserts that, the liberation of the holy land operated itself in a collective soul of the west. Jerusalem had a unique symbolic importance. Touching it was equivalent to touching the very heart of Christianity.⁵⁵⁸

Threat of the Ottoman Turks

The “Ottoman Empire (1301-1922), was the one of the largest and longest lasting Empires in history. It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam, and Islamic institutions. It replaced the Byzantine Empire as the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean.”⁵⁵⁹ After seven centuries of ruling, the empire officially ended on the 1st November 1922, when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished and Turkey was declared a republic.⁵⁶⁰

Ottoman expansion which covered a very big part of Europe, Arabia, and North Africa, had a profound influence and impact which is considered in any study of Europe in the late Middle Age.

The ease with which the Ottoman Empire achieved military victories led Western Europeans to fear that ongoing Ottoman success would collapse the political and social infrastructure of the West and bring about the downfall of Christendom.

557 Ibid.

558 Ibid, p. 194.

559 BBC, Ottoman empire, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml>, 22nd January 2013.

560 Ibid.

Such a momentous threat could not be ignored and the Europeans mounted crusades against the Ottomans in 1366, 1396, and 1444, but to no avail.⁵⁶¹

The Ottomans didn‟t stop military conquest for expending their territory and imposing their faith.

Although Ottoman expansion was greatly feared in the late Middle Ages, the Ottomans generally allowed religious groups to continue to practice their own faiths within the conquered territories. They also tended to preserve the established feudal institutions and, in many cases, permitted the co-existence of law codes to regulate the different ethnic and religious groups.⁵⁶²

The capture of Constantinople in 1453 by “Sultan Mehmed II (1432-1481)”⁵⁶³ saw a substantial attempt to revive the crusade as the principal military mechanism for defending Christianity in Europe against the advance of the Ottoman Turks.⁵⁶⁴ From there an impressive effort was made by Europeans for recruiting a very large numbers of crusaders between 1454 and 1464, and between 1501 and 1503, and substantial sums of money were raised through the vigorous preaching of indulgences in the Holy Roman Empire.⁵⁶⁵

For the majority of western peoples,

The loss of Constantinople is a great historical disaster, a defeat of Christendom which has never been repaired. In spite of the present relations between Turkey and the West, there is still a reserve of mistrust, and even at times of hostility, with roots deep in the European Christian past.⁵⁶⁶

561 Michelle Lynn, Danielle 11: History of the world, AuthorHouse, Bloomington, USA, 2012, p.140.

562 The end of Europe’s middle ages,

<http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle/FRAMES/ottoframe.html>, 6th October 2012.

563 Sultan Mehmed II, at the age of 21, he conquered Constantinople and brought an end to the Byzantine Empire.

He continued his conquests in Asia, with the Anatolian reunification, and in Europe, as far as Bosnia and Croatia. Mehmed II is regarded as a national hero in Turkey, and his name has been given to Istambul‟s Fatih Sultan Mehmed Bridge. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_II>, 8th October 2012.

564 Norman Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman threat, 1453-1505,

<http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/European/General/?view=usa&ci=9780199227051>

6th October 2012.

565 Ibid.

566 Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.115.

According to Bernard Lewis, “the loss of Constantinople was certainly a defeat of Christendom and of Europe.” ⁵⁶⁷ He continues in saying that “the four slender minarets that the Turks added to the Church of Santa Sophia may be, for the Christian, is a desecration.”⁵⁶⁸Some Christians in Eastern and Western Europe are not yet ready to forget that.

Speech of the Pope Urbain II

“Pope Urban II”⁵⁶⁹ convoked the Council of Clermont in France on November 27^th 1095, and called for the First crusade in these words:

Men of God, men chosen and blessed among all, combine your forces! Take the road to the Holy Sepulcher assured of the imperishable glory that awaits you in God's kingdom. Let each one deny himself and take the Cross!” With a shout „God wills it‟ the Assembly rose. They adopted a red cross as their emblem, and within a few hours no more red material remained in the town because the knights had cut it all up into crosses to be sewn on their sleeves.⁵⁷⁰

This is considered as one of the most influential speeches in the Middle Age, it called Christian princes and all believers in Europe to go on a crusade to rescue the Holy Land taken by the Turks. It combined the ideas of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the idea of starting a holy war against “infidels”.

The noble race of Franks must come to the aid their fellow Christians in the East.

The infidel Turks are advancing into the heart of Eastern Christendom; Christians are being oppressed and attacked; churches and holy places are being defiled.

Jerusalem is groaning under the Saracen yoke. The Holy Sepulcher is in Muslim

567 Ibid, p.120.

568 Ibid.

569 Pope Urbain II was born around 1035 to a noble family in Northern of France. He worked in Germany as a papal legate, trying to maintain support for Pope Gregory VII in the struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor.

After Gregory‟s death and the short papacy of Victor III, Urbain was elected Pope on 12th March 1088 (see, Pope Urbain II,

<http://www.umich.edu/~eng415/timeline/Urban.html>, 14th September 2012)

570 Anne W. Carrol, The Crusades, <http://www.catholicfidelity.com/apologetics-topics/crusades/the-crusade-by- ann-w- carroll/>, 14th August 2016.

hands and has been turned into a mosque. Pilgrims are harassed and even prevented from access to the Holy Land. The West must march to the defense of the East. All should go, rich and poor alike. The Franks must stop their internal wars and squabbles. Let them go instead against the infidel and fight a righteous war. God himself will lead them, for they will be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of Christ. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. God wills it! Deus vult (God wills it) became the battle cry of the Crusader.⁵⁷¹

The months which followed the Council of Clermont were marked by religious excitement in Western Europe. Popular preachers everywhere took up the cry „God wills it‟. A monk named Peter the Hermit aroused large parts of France with his passionate eloquence, as he rode from town to town, carrying a huge cross before him and preaching to vast crowds.⁵⁷² Franks were very active because they were “presented as the chosen instruments of God (Gesta Dei per Francos).”⁵⁷³ Preachers of the crusades were powerful in communicating and advocating violence through their violent words, they thought that their sermons were pious and contained noble ideals.⁵⁷⁴ The crusades created a deep hatred between Christians and Muslims because of their violence and cruelty. From them emerged a kind of defensive reaction to all western actions.

571 Raymond Robert Fischer, Israel my Inheritance: Persecuted Messianic Jews Cry Out for Justice and Reform, Creation House Book, Florida, USA, 2011,p.90.

572 The First crusade, <http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/the-first-crusade.htm>, 14th September 2012 573 Abdullah Mohammed Sindi, The Western Christian terrorism against the Arabs,

<http://www.radioislam.org/sindi/croisades.htm>, 18th October 2012.

574 Abbijit Nayak, Crusade violence: Understanding and overcoming the impact of mission among Muslims, in International Rewiew of Mission, vol.97 No586/587, July,October 2008, p.276.