Crusades
The term "crusade" used in modern historiography at first referred to the wars in the Holy Land beginning in 1095, but the range of events to which the term has been applied has been greatly extended, so that its use can create a misleading impression of coherence, particularly regarding the early Crusades. The term used for the campaign of the First Crusade was "iter" "journey" or "peregrinatio" "pilgrimage". The terminology of crusading remained largely indistinguishable from that of pilgrimage during the 12th century, reflecting the reality of the first century of crusading where not all armed pilgrims fought, and not all who fought had taken the cross. It was not until the late 12th to early 13th centuries that a more specific "language of crusading" emerged. Pope Innocent III used the term "negotium crucis" "affair of the cross" for the Eastern Mediterranean crusade, but was reluctant to apply crusading terminology to the Albigensian crusade. The "Song of the Albigensian Crusade" from about 1213 contains the first recorded vernacular use of the Occitan "crozada". This term was later adopted into French as "croisade" and in English as "crusade". The modern spelling "crusade" dates to c. 1760. Sinibaldo Fieschi (the future pope Innocent IV) used the terms "crux transmarina" for crusades in Outremer against Muslims and "crux cismarina" for crusades in Europe against other enemies of the church. Medieval Armenian term for Crusades — xacˇ‘e˘nkalk‘.
Role of Christianity in civilization
In 1095, Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to re-take the Holy Land from Muslim rule.
"After Mohammad's death in 632, a series of caliphs (successors) waged energetic jihad against neighboring people's. Palestine, Syria, Persia, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain and were moving into France. In 732, at the Battle of Tours, Charles Martel defeated Muslim invaders and sent them back into Spain. By the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks had conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The holdings of the old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, were reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East." This was the first crusade, but the "Colossus of the Medieval world was Islam, not Christendom" and despite initial success, the conflicts, which lasted four centuries, ultimately ended in a failure to retake the "Holy Land" and only barely prevented the taking of the European continent.