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‘.
Crusades
In 1095, at the Council of Piacenza, Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military aid from Pope Urban II, probably in the form of a small body of mercenary reinforcements he could direct and control. Alexios had restored the Empire's finances and authority, but he still faced a number of foreign enemies, particularly the migrating Turks who had colonised the sparsely populated areas of Anatolia. At the Council of Clermont later that year, Urban raised the issue again and preached for a Crusade. Many historians consider that Urban also hoped that aiding the Eastern Church would lead to its reunion with the Western under his leadership.
Almost immediately Peter the Hermit led thousands of mostly poor Christians out of Europe in what became known as the People's Crusade. He claimed he had a letter from heaven instructing Christians to prepare for the imminent apocalypse by seizing Jerusalem. The motivations of this Crusade included a "messianism of the poor" inspired by an expected mass ascension into heaven at Jerusalem. Germany witnessed the first incidents of major violent European antisemitism when these Crusaders massacred Jewish communities in what became known as the Rhineland massacres. In Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne the range of anti-Jewish activity was broad, extending from limited, spontaneous violence to full-scale military attacks. The Crusaders journeyed, despite advice from Alexios' to wait for the nobles, to Nicaea. Only 3000 survived an ambush by the Turks at the Civetot.