Crusades

Background

In the late eleventh century, as the Seljuk Turks, an Islamic power, extended their rule into Asia Minor (present-day Türkiye), the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) emperor Alexios I appealed to the West for military aid. In 1095, at the Council of Clermont in France, Pope Urban II called for aid to the Christians of the East and for the recovery of Jerusalem. Participants attached the sign of the cross to their clothing, and the name "crusade" derives from this practice. The pope promised participants an indulgence remitting the punishment due for sin. By this time the Eastern and Western churches had already separated, having excommunicated each other in 1054 (see East–West Schism).

Course of the Crusades

Scholars count the expeditions in different ways, but the major campaigns are commonly divided into eight or nine crusades.

• First Crusade (1096–1099): The crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem and other crusader states. Large numbers of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants were killed during the capture of the city. Earlier, at the outset of the campaign in 1096, bands of crusaders massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland, including those of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz.
• Second Crusade (1147–1149): After the fall of Edessa in 1144, Bernard of Clairvaux preached the crusade, but the expedition failed.
• Third Crusade (1189–1192): After Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187, Richard I of England, Philip II of France, and Frederick I of the Holy Roman Empire took up the cross. They did not recover Jerusalem but concluded a treaty that allowed pilgrims access to the city.
• Fourth Crusade (1202–1204): The crusading army sacked Constantinople, itself a Christian city, and established the Latin Empire.
• Further expeditions followed, including campaigns aimed at Egypt and the crusades of King Louis IX of France, but with the fall of Acre, the last crusader stronghold, in 1291, the crusader states in the East came to an end.

The crusade as an institution was also extended beyond the Holy Land and applied to campaigns such as the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) against the Cathars of southern France, whom the papacy had condemned as heretics.

Results and Influence

Although the Crusades failed to secure the Holy Land, they contributed to the growth of Mediterranean trade and of cultural exchange between East and West. At the same time, crusading fervor fed an intensification of the persecution of Jews within Europe, and the Byzantine Empire was severely weakened by the Fourth Crusade. The sack of Constantinople further deepened the rift between the Eastern and Western churches. The expansion of the system of indulgences is cited as one of the background factors in the indulgence controversy of the Reformation period.

Assessment

In medieval and modern Europe, the Crusades were often portrayed as stories of religious devotion and chivalry, but today they are frequently cited as a prime example of violence committed in the name of religion. Some historians emphasize their character as a defensive response to the expansion of Islamic powers, whereas in the Islamic world and the Eastern Orthodox world they are remembered as invasion and plunder. Within the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II is reported to have expressed regret for the sack of Constantinople and related events during his visit to Greece in 2001. Protestants generally regard the Crusades as an affair of the medieval church under papal authority, while also broadly acknowledging that their violent methods were incompatible with the gospel.

In the Korean church, the word for "crusade" (sipjagun) has at times been used to refer to large-scale evangelistic campaigns. In the United States, the evangelistic meetings of Billy Graham were called "crusades." Campus Crusade for Christ, the international organization affiliated with Korea Campus Crusade for Christ, changed its name in the United States to "Cru" in 2011, citing, among other reasons, the negative connotations of the word. The expression "crusade-style mission" is also used to criticize aggressive approaches to mission that fail to respect other cultures.