When did the Crusades begin?
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‘.
Rhineland massacres
Previous to the Crusades, the Jews were divided among three major areas which were largely independent of one another. These were the Jews living in Islamic nations (still the majority), those in the Byzantine Empire and those in the Roman Catholic West. With the persecutions that began around 1096, a new awareness of the entire people took hold across all of these groups, reuniting the three separate strands.
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.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)
Spencer claims Islam as militant and oppressive, and argues that the Crusades were a late response of European civilization to centuries of invasion and occupation which had begun at the turn of the 8th century in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Sicily, France, and the majority of Eastern Europe. He attributes the perceived civilizational clash between Islam and the West in the 21st century to a continuation of a 14 century long jihad began at the inception of Islam and discusses the what he claims are difficulties of treating this topic in the current political climate.
Lǫgmaðr Guðrøðarson
Late in 1095, Pope Urban II (died 1099) first proclaimed an armed pilgrimage, or penitential holy war, that led to the First Crusade of 1096–1102. Before the end of the year, tens of thousands of men, women, and children answered his call to re-establish Christian control of Jerusalem. The particular terminology employed by the "Chronicle of Mann"—that Lǫgmaðr departed the kingdom "marked with the sign of the Lord's cross"—suggests that he participated in a crusade. On the other hand, since the chronicle was compiled in the thirteenth century, during a period when the idea of a cross-bearing pilgrim was well established, it is possible that this depiction of Lǫgmaðr has been contaminated by anachronistic conceptions.
Norwegian Crusade
The Norwegian Crusade, led by Norwegian King Sigurd I, was a crusade or a pilgrimage (sources differ) that lasted from 1107 to 1111, in the aftermath of the First Crusade. The Norwegian Crusade marks the first time a European king personally went to the Holy Land.
The Order (2001 film)
The film opens in 1099 at the end of the First Crusade, depicting Christian Crusaders sacking Jerusalem and slaughtering the local population. A Flemish Christian knight named Charles Le Vaillant (Jean-Claude Van Damme) becomes demoralized by the horrors of war and decides to create a new religious order. This new order brings together members from the three main religions of the region: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. As a self-declared leader and messiah, Charles writes the sacred texts of the Order. While traveling to Syria his camp is attacked by the Christian knights, who kill Le Vaillant. The last chapter from their religious text, buried by Le Vaillant in a secret place, becomes lost in the desert after the attack.
Eighth Crusade
The Eighth Crusade was a crusade launched by Louis IX of France against the city of Tunis in 1270. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades of Frederick II are counted as a single crusade. The Ninth Crusade is sometimes also counted as part of the Eighth. The crusade is considered a failure after Louis died shortly after arriving on the shores of Tunisia, with his disease-ridden army dispersing back to Europe shortly afterwards.
The Crusaders (2001 film)
In the 11th century three men flee from an Italian city and make their way to the Holy Land to take part in the First Crusade (AD 1096-1099).
Maarrat al-Nu'man
Those events had a strong impact on the local inhabitants of Southwest Asia. The crusaders already had a reputation for cruelty and barbarism towards Muslims, Jews and even local Christians, Catholic and Orthodox alike (the Crusades began shortly after the Great Schism of 1054).
Historiography of the Crusades
The historiography of the crusades has been a controversial topic since at least the Protestant Reformation.
The term "croisades" was first used to refer to the entire period from the First Crusade until the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in French historiography of the 17th century.
The 18th-century Enlightenment ideology as represented by Edward Gibbon and Voltaire held up the crusades as an example of medieval barbarism, while 19th-century Romantic nationalism tended to paint them in a heroic light, surrounding the crusades with an aura of romance and grandeur, of chivalry and courage. In the second half of the 20th century, western historiography again tended to be more critical of the crusades, following Steven Runciman (1951–4).
Popular opinion, influenced by general trends of decolonisation and critical theory tended to portray the crusades with a sense of "western guilt".
In early 21st literature, a "pluralist" view has become common which tends to generalize the concept of the crusades
to include other medieval military campaigns authorized by the church, such as the Northern Crusades, the Albigensian Crusade or the Reconquista.
Historiography of the Crusades
Steven Runciman's three volume "History of the Crusades" (1951–54) marks a turn from the idealization of the Crusades as heroic enterprise in the 19th century to their denunciation as "a barbarian invasion", primarily of the Byzantine Empire, among a current of historiography of the second half of the 20th century.
Peters (2011) says that Runciman's work "instantly became the most widely known and respected single-author survey of the subject in English." 
Madden (2005) stresses the impact of Runciman's style and viewpoint: as having "single-handedly crafted the current popular concept of the crusades" by painting the crusaders as "simpletons or barbarians".
Eliot Lewis
Crusade
Crusades
As the Ottomans pressed westward, Sultan Murad II destroyed the last Papal-funded Crusade at Varna on the Black Sea in 1444 and four years later crushed the last Hungarian expedition. In 1453 they extinguished most of the remains of the Byzantine Empire with the capture of Constantinople. John Hunyadi and Giovanni da Capistrano organised a 1456 Crusade to oppose the Ottoman Empire and lift its Siege of Belgrade. Æneas Sylvius and John of Capistrano preached the Crusade, the princes of the Holy Roman Empire in the Diets of Ratisbon and Frankfurt promised assistance, and a league was formed between Venice, Florence, and Milan, but nothing eventually came of it. In April 1487 Pope Innocent VIII called for a Crusade against the Waldensians of Savoy, the Piedmont, and the Dauphiné in southern France and northern Italy because they were unorthodox and heretical. The only efforts undertaken were in the Dauphiné, resulting in little change. Venice was the only polity to continue to pose a significant threat to the Ottomans in the Mediterranean, but it pursued the "Crusade" mostly for its commercial interests, leading to the protracted Ottoman–Venetian Wars, which continued, with interruptions, until 1718. The end of the Crusading in terms of at least nominal efforts by Catholic Europe against Muslim incursion, came in the 16thcentury, when the Franco-Imperial wars assumed continental proportions. Francis I of France sought allies from all quarters, including from German Protestant princes and Muslims. Amongst these, he entered into one of the capitulations of the Ottoman Empire with Suleiman the Magnificent while making common cause with Hayreddin Barbarossa and a number of the Sultan's North African vassals.
Finnish–Novgorodian wars
Also noteworthy is the so-called First Swedish Crusade, which, according to several 15th-century sources, took place in 1150. The crusade is only known from later legends that presented the expedition (if it ever took place) as a Christian mission, headed by a saint king to baptize heathens. However, it seems to have followed the exceptionally edgy 1140s with both the Yem and Swedes fighting against Novgorod. Some historians have seen it as a direct reaction to the failed Yem expedition in 1149, associating it with the co-operation mentioned by the Pope 20 years later.
The Law of Civilization and Decay
Adams proceeds from Rome to the Middle Ages, in which nomadic barbarians (mostly of Germanic origin) spread throughout the Empire, eventually settling and establishing kingdoms in Gaul, Iberia and Italy. As it might have been predicted, these small kingdoms were soon at war with each other. Initially, these kingdoms, unlike the Empire, were able to support themselves. The cost was a loss of technology, and a temporary lapse of high civilization during what has come to be known as the "Dark Ages". Christianity, still headquartered in Rome, gained much in prestige during this time, and came to wield enormous power. The Church amassed huge amounts of wealth through various means, fair and foul. By 1200 AD, the Pope had far more power than any secular ruler. Overall, the Middle Ages were a period of decentralization where people were bound together by oaths of loyalty (feudalism and manorialism), rather than national identities. Superstition and the "imaginative mind" gained preeminence, along with religious fervor. By 1095, the beginnings of Europe's modern nation-states could be discerned; controlled, often not willingly, by the Catholic Church. "Until, the mechanical arts have advanced far enough to cause the attack in war to predominate over the defence, centralization cannot begin…" The First Crusade represents the point at which Western Europe took its first steps toward centralization. Europe was thoroughly self-sufficient, yet stagnation was not far off, and an infusion of capital was needed. Perhaps no-one thought of it in those terms, but there was a sense that European influence should expand, and the reconquest of Jerusalem was a good cause to inspire the necessary fervor. The "opening" of the Holy Land is significant to Western culture for three reasons: economic capital, cultural renaissance, and trade. When the four Crusader Kingdoms were set up following the Sack of Jerusalem in AD 1099, large amounts of wealth were discovered and sent back to Europe. This cured the immediate fiscal problems. Also, the Greek and Roman classics (which had been preserved by Arab scholars) were rediscovered, which led to an increased interest in antiquity. Finally, and most importantly, trade was resumed between the East and the West. This allowed new imports (such as silk and spices), and a new market for European exports. The economic push provided by the Crusades encouraged centralization, but also fueled tension between Church and the local governments. If the monarchs of Europe wanted increased power and wealth, they would have to take it from the Catholic Church. The monasteries proved to be an immediate source for much of the wealth. Their vow of poverty prevented the monks from using most of their money; consequently, monasteries and churches often contained great hoards of tangible wealth. The coming of the Reformation proved disastrous for them, as secular monarchs were emboldened to intimidate, coerce or abolish them to obtain their wealth. This redistribution eventually led to the secular monarchies gaining predominance over the Holy See.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Many historians maintain that the main concern of Pope Urban II, when calling for the First Crusade, was the threat to Constantinople from the Turkish invasion of Asia Minor in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Historians agree that the fate of Jerusalem and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was of concern if not the immediate goal of papal policy in 1095. The idea of taking Jerusalem gained more focus as the Crusade was underway. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids (who had recently taken it from the Abassids) by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099.
The First Crusade was envisioned as an armed pilgrimage, and no crusader could consider his journey complete unless he had prayed as a pilgrim at the Holy Sepulchre. Crusader Prince Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the first crusader monarch of Jerusalem, decided not to use the title "king" during his lifetime, and declared himself "Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri" ("Protector [or Defender] of the Holy Sepulchre"). By the crusader period, a cistern under the former basilica was rumoured to have been the location where Helena had found the True Cross, and began to be venerated as such; although the cistern later became the "Chapel of the Invention of the Cross," there is no evidence of the rumour before the 11th century, and modern archaeological investigation has now dated the cistern to 11th century repairs by Monomachos.
According to the German clergyman and orient pilgrim Ludolf von Sudheim, the keys of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre were in hands of the "ancient Georgians" and the food, alms, candles and oil for lamps were given them by the pilgrims in the south door of the church.
Perpetual war
The Crusades arose as European expansion was growing at the peak of unified Islamic dominance. As the Crusades marked the beginning of conflict between the Christian countries and Islamic countries, some say that the so-called war on terror is a continuation of the Crusades. On September 16, 2001, in a speech, President Bush referred to the War on terror as a crusade. He said:
Children's Crusade
P. Alphandery (1916) first published his ideas about the crusade in 1916 in an article which was later published in book form in 1959. He considered the story of the crusade to be an expression of the medieval cult of the Innocents, as a sort of sacrificial rite in which the Innocents gave themselves up for the good of Christendom; however, he based his ideas on some of the most untrustworthy sources.
The Song of Roland
The occurrence of this term in the poem cannot be interpreted as showing influence from the Crusades in the poem; on the contrary, the way it is used in the poem, in which it is simply a Muslim land, indicates that the author of the poem was unacquainted with the Crusades, and that the term was in French before the Crusades began meaning the far side of the Mediterranean Sea. The bulk of the poem is adjudged to date from before the Crusades (which started in 1098), but there are a few items where questions remain about these items being late additions shortly after the Crusades started.
Crusades
In the Iberian peninsula, Crusader privileges were given to those aiding the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Iberian orders that merged with the orders of Calatrava and Santiago. The Christian kingdoms pushed the Muslim Moors and Almohads back in frequent Papal-endorsed Iberian Crusades from 1212 to 1265. The Emirate of Granada held out until 1492, at which point the Muslims and Jews were finally expelled from the peninsula.
Crusades
From the 8th century, the Christians entered to recapture the Iberian peninsula from the Muslims, known as the "Reconquista". The campaign reached a  turning point in 1085 when Alfonso VI of León and Castile captured Toledo. In the same period, the Muslim Emirate of Sicily was conquered by Norman adventurer Roger de Hauteville in 1091.
Crusade of the Poor
The Crusade of the Poor was the first major popular expression of support for crusading after the fall of the Crusader states in the Holy Land. Acre, the last remaining city of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, fell to the Mamluks in 1291. In August 1308, Pope Clement V issued instructions for the preaching of a crusade to be launched against the Mamluks in the spring of 1309. This was to be a small, preliminary expedition led by the Hospitallers, a religious military order. The preaching of the crusade was to solicit funds and prayers, not direct participation on the part of the laity. In early 1309 the crusade was postponed until the autumn. In June and July 1309, Clement sent letters reminding those bishops charged with the preaching of the crusade north of the Alps that they were to solicit only funds and prayers and to discourage participation. Indulgences were offered to those providing money.
Military history of the Crusader states
The war with Fatimid Egypt began when the First Crusade invaded Fatimid territory and started the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099. Soon after, the Crusaders stormed and captured the city. The war between the newly established Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and Fatimid Egypt continued until Saladin became the effective ruler of Egypt in 1169.
Sixth Crusade
The Sixth Crusade started in 1228 as an attempt to regain Jerusalem. It began seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade and involved very little actual fighting. The diplomatic maneuvering of the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, Frederick II, resulted in the Kingdom of Jerusalem regaining some control over Jerusalem for much of the ensuing fifteen years (1229–39, 1241–44) as well as over other areas of the Holy Land.
Northern Crusades
The Northern Crusades provided a rationale for the growth and expansion of the Teutonic Order of German crusading knights which had been founded in Palestine at the end of the 12th century. Due to Muslim successes in the Holy Land, the Order sought new missions in Europe. Duke Konrad I of Masovia in west-central Poland appealed to the Knights to defend his borders and subdue the pagan Baltic Prussians in 1226. After the subjugation of the Prussians, the Teutonic Knights fought against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Crusades
The Islamic prophet Muhammad founded Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and had united much of Arabia into a single polity by his death in 632. Arab power expanded rapidly in the 7th and 8th centuries largely by military conquest. This influence spread to the north-west Indian subcontinent, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, the Iberian peninsula and the Pyrenees. Jerusalem was taken from the Byzantine Empire after a siege in 637.
Heraldry
The origins of heraldry are sometimes associated with the Crusades, a series of military campaigns undertaken by Christian armies from 1096 to 1487, with the goal of reconquering Jerusalem and other former Byzantine territories captured by Muslim forces during the seventh century. While there is no evidence that heraldic art originated in the course of the Crusades, there is no reason to doubt that the gathering of large armies, drawn from across Europe for a united cause, would have encouraged the adoption of armorial bearings as a means of identifying one's commanders in the field, or that it helped disseminate the principles of armory across Europe. At least two distinctive features of heraldry are generally accepted as products of the crusaders: the surcoat, an outer garment worn over the armor to protect the wearer from the heat of the sun, was often decorated with the same devices that appeared on a knight's shield. It is from this garment that the phrase "coat of arms" is derived. Also the lambrequin, or mantling, that depends from the helmet and frames the shield in modern heraldry, began as a practical covering for the helmet and the back of the neck during the Crusades, serving much the same function as the surcoat. Its slashed or scalloped edge, today rendered as billowing flourishes, is thought to have originated from hard wearing in the field, or as a means of deadening a sword blow and perhaps entangling the attacker's weapon.
History of Islam
In the Third Crusade armies from Europe failed to recapture Jerusalem, though Crusader states lingered for several decades, and other crusades followed. The Christian Reconquista continued in Al-Andalus, and was eventually completed with the fall of Granada in 1492. During the low period of the Crusades, the Fourth Crusade was diverted from the Levant and instead took Constantinople, leaving the Eastern Roman Empire (now the Byzantine Empire) further weakened in their long struggle against the Turkish peoples to the east. However, the crusaders did manage to damage Islamic caliphates; according to William of Malmesbury, preventing them from further expansion into Christendom and being targets of the Mamluks and the Mongols.
Middle Ages
Popes called for crusades to take place elsewhere besides the Holy Land: in Spain, southern France, and along the Baltic. The Spanish crusades became fused with the "Reconquista" of Spain from the Muslims. Although the Templars and Hospitallers took part in the Spanish crusades, similar Spanish military religious orders were founded, most of which had become part of the two main orders of Calatrava and Santiago by the beginning of the 12th century. Northern Europe also remained outside Christian influence until the 11th century or later, and became a crusading venue as part of the Northern Crusades of the 12th to 14th centuries. These crusades also spawned a military order, the Order of the Sword Brothers. Another order, the Teutonic Knights, although founded in the crusader states, focused much of its activity in the Baltic after 1225, and in 1309 moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia.
Crusades
Under the papacies of successive Popes smaller groups of Crusaders continued to travel to the Eastern Mediterranean to fight the Muslims and aid the Crusader States in the early 12thcentury. The third decade saw campaigns by Fulk V of Anjou, the Venetians, and Conrad III of Germany and the foundation of the Knights Templar. The period also saw the innovation of granting indulgences to those who opposed papal enemies, and this marked the beginning of politically motivated Crusades. The loss of Aleppo in 1128 and Edessa (Urfa) in 1144 to Imad ad-Din Zengi, governor of Mosul, led to preaching for what subsequently became known as the Second Crusade. King Louis VII and ConradIII led armies from France and Germany to Jerusalem and Damascus without winning any major victories. As in the First Crusade, the preaching led to attacks on Jews including massacres in the Rhineland, Cologne, Mainz, Worms and Speyer amid claims that the Jews were not contributing financially to the rescue of the Holy Land. Bernard of Clairvaux, who had encouraged the Second Crusade in his preaching, was so perturbed by the violence that he journeyed from Flanders to Germany to deal with the problem.
Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms
Beginning in 1174, the Crusades Campaign is set several years prior to the outbreak of the Third Crusade, continuing into the Fourth Crusade and beyond. It follows the Kingdom of Jerusalem led by Richard the Lionheart and the Principality of Antioch led by Philip Augustus as they attempt to strengthen the presence of Christendom in the Holy Lands, whilst the Zengid Emirate led by Nur ad-Din Zangi and the Ayyubid Sultanate led by Saladin attempt to drive them out. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Empire led by Emperor Manuel Komnenos slowly moves into the middle east to regain its lost glory, and attempts to drive back the armies of the Turks as well as deal with the rebels and the Venetians that harass them in the west.Generals in the Crusades campaign have the ability to construct permanent forts that remain even after vacated by troops.
Barons' Crusade
This crusade to the Holy Land is sometimes discussed as two separate crusades: that of King Theobald I of Navarre, which began in 1239; and, the separate host of crusaders under the leadership of Richard of Cornwall, which arrived after Theobald departed in 1240. Additionally, the Barons' Crusade is often described in tandem with Baldwin of Courtenay's concurrent trip to Constantinople and capture of Tzurulum with a separate, smaller force of crusaders. This is because Gregory IX briefly attempted to redirect the target his new crusade from liberating the Holy Land from Muslims to protecting the Latin Empire of Constantinople from heretical Christians.
History of the Jews and the Crusades
As the Crusades began, many Jews were in danger of being killed. There are documented accounts of how, as the Crusades spread and reached different towns and cities, Christians stood up and attempted to protect the neighboring Jews. In the German city of Trier, the local bishop attempted to protect the Jews. The bishop was still new to the city, however, and did not have the political power necessary to band the town together. In the face of the crusaders' attack, the local bishop abandoned his attempt to save the Jews and told them that "You cannot be saved—your God does not wish to save you now as he did in earlier day. Behold this large crowd that stands before the gateway of the palace", as well as forcing them to choose between conversion and removal from his palace.
History of the papacy
Long-standing divisions between East and West also came to a head in the East–West Schism and the Crusades. The first seven Ecumenical Councils had been attended by both Western and Eastern prelates, but growing doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political and geographic differences finally resulted in mutual denunciations and excommunications. Pope Urban II (1088–99) speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095 became the rallying cry of the First Crusade.
Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt
The temperance campaign that was led by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was born in Ohio and New York State in 1873 when local women, concerned about alcohol's influence on home life, met in churches for prayer and then embarked on visits to saloons to confront those they felt responsible. During the next couple of years, the movement caught fire, with women demanding that saloons cease selling alcohol. The women of Fredonia, New York were the first credited with visiting local saloons under the aegis of their leader Mrs. Esther McNeil and, on December 22, 1873 were the first to call themselves the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Two days later, following a lecture at the Hillsboro, Ohio Music Hall the night before, the Crusade was born when Mrs. Eliza Thompson, a judge's wife and the daughter of a former governor, gathered 70 women in prayer at the Presbyterian Church and marched to the local saloons. Singing hymns as they went, the women demanded the saloons cease selling alcohol.
Temple Mount
The Crusader period began in 1099 with the First Crusade's capture of Jerusalem. After the city's conquest, the Crusading order known as the Knights Templar was granted use of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. This was probably by Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem at the Council of Nablus in January 1120, which gave the Templars a headquarters in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what were believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's Temple, and it was from this location that the new Order took the name of "Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon", or "Templar" knights.
Christian pilgrimage
The crusades were at first a success, the Crusader states, especially the kingdom of Jerusalem, guaranteeing
safe access to the Holy Land for Christian pilgrims during the 12th century, but the enterprise of the crusades was ultimately doomed to failure, and the Holy Land was entirely re-conquered by the Ayyubids by the end of the 13th century.
Crusades
The 20th century produced three important histories of the Crusades: one by Steven Runciman, another by Rene Grousset, and a multi-author work edited by Kenneth Setton. Historians in this period often echoed Enlightenment-era criticism: Runciman wrote during the 1950s, "High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed ... the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God". According to Norman Davies, the Crusades contradicted the Peace and Truce of God supported by Urban and reinforced the connection between Western Christendom, feudalism, and militarism. The formation of military religious orders scandalised the Orthodox Byzantines, and Crusaders pillaged countries they crossed on their journey east. Violating their oath to restore land to the Byzantines, they often kept the land for themselves. The Fourth Crusade is widely considered controversial in its "betrayal" of Byzantium. Similarly, Norman Housley viewed the persecution of Jews in the First Crusadea pogrom in the Rhineland and the massacre of thousands of Jews in Central Europeas part of the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe.
Barons' Crusade
The Barons' Crusade, also called the Crusade of 1239, was in territorial terms the most successful crusade since the First. Called by Pope Gregory IX, the Barons' Crusade broadly spanned from 1234-1241 and embodied the highest point of papal endeavor "to make crusading a universal Christian undertaking." Gregory called for a crusade in France, England, and Hungary with different degrees of success. Although the crusaders did not achieve any glorious military victories, they used diplomacy to successfully play the two warring factions of the Muslim Ayyubid dynasty (As-Salih Ismail in Damascus and As-Salih Ayyub in Egypt) against one another for even more concessions than Frederick II gained during the more well-known Sixth Crusade. For a few years, the Barons' Crusade returned the Kingdom of Jerusalem to its largest size since 1187.
Reconquista
The Crusades, which started late in the 11th century, bred the religious ideology of a Christian reconquest, confronted at that time with a similarly staunch Muslim Jihad ideology in Al-Andalus by the Almoravids, and to an even greater degree by the Almohads. In fact, previous documents from the 10th and 11th centuries are mute on any idea of "reconquest". Propaganda accounts of Muslim-Christian hostility came into being to support that idea, most notably the "Chanson de Roland", a fictitious 11th-century French version of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778) dealing with the Iberian "Saracens" ("Moors"), and taught as historical fact in the French educational system since 1880.
Criticism of Islamism
Lewis argues that any traumatization from the Crusades felt by Muslims surely would pale in comparison to what European Christendom felt from Islam. The Crusades started in 1096 and the Crusaders lost their last toe-hold when the city of Acre, was taken less than two hundred years later in 1291, whereas Europe felt under constant threat from Islam, "from the first Moorish landing in Spain [711] to the second Turkish siege of Vienna [1683]."
Sectarian violence
Although the First Crusade was initially launched in response to an appeal from Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos for help in repelling the invading Seljuq Turks from Anatolia, one of the lasting legacies of the Crusades was to "further separate the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity from each other."
First Crusade
The four main crusader armies left Europe around the appointed time in August 1096. They took different paths to Constantinople and gathered outside its city walls between November 1096 and April 1097; Hugh of Vermandois arrived first, followed by Godfrey, Raymond, and Bohemond. This time, Emperor Alexios was more prepared for the crusaders; there were fewer incidents of violence along the way.
Northern Crusades
Moving in the wake of German merchants who were now following the old trading routes of the Vikings, a monk named Meinhard landed at the mouth of the Daugava river in present-day Latvia in 1180 and was made bishop in 1186. Pope Celestine III proclaimed a crusade against the Baltic heathens in 1195, which was reiterated by Pope Innocent III and a crusading expedition led by Meinhard's successor, Bishop Berthold of Hanover, landed in Livonia (part of present-day Latvia, surrounding the Gulf of Riga) in 1198. Although the crusaders won their first battle, Bishop Berthold was mortally wounded and the crusaders were repulsed.
Christianity
From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II, the Crusades were launched. These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
Fulcher of Chartres
Fulcher wrote a chronicle of the crusade, made of three books. He started writing it in 1101 and finished around 1128. The chronicle is considered among the best records of the crusade. Included in the chronicle is his account of Pope Urban II's speech at the Council of Clermont in November 1095 to launch the First Crusade. Within his account of Urban’s speech there was a promise of remission of sins for anyone who participated in the crusade:
All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion! Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! on this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let them eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide.
Crusader states
In the Baltic region, the indigenous tribes in the Middle Ages at first staunchly refused Christianity. In 1193, Pope Celestine III urged Christians to have a crusade against the heathens which included the Old Prussians, the Lithuanians and other tribes inhabiting Estonia, Latvia and East Prussia. This period of warfare is called the Northern Crusades.
Ayyubid dynasty
Pope Gregory VIII called for a Third Crusade against the Muslims in early 1189. Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, Philip Augustus of France, and Richard the Lionheart of England formed an alliance to reconquer Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Crusaders and the Ayyubids fought near Acre that year and were joined by the reinforcements from Europe. From 1189 to 1191, Acre was besieged by the Crusaders, and despite initial Muslim successes, it fell to Richard's forces. A massacre of 2,700 Muslim inhabitants ensued, and the Crusaders then planned to take Ascalon in the south.
Islam in Palestine
In 1099, the Christian Crusaders, under the support of the Roman Catholic Church, launched the First Crusade campaign with the aims of regaining control of Jerusalem from the Islamic Empire, and helping the Byzantine Empire fight the Seljuk Turks. During the campaign, the Crusaders launched an assault on the city of Jerusalem, captured it in July 1099, massacring many of the city's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, and established the first Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Crusaders transformed the Dome of the Rock into the "Shrine of the Lord" (Templum Domini) and the Al-Aqsa mosque into the "Hall of Solomon" (Templum Solomonis). The local Muslim reaction was to try to find an accommodation with the Crusaders. During this era, the larger Muslim world looked upon the setbacks in Jerusalem with indifference.
Shepherds' Crusade (1320)
The crusade started in May 1320 in Normandy, when a teenage shepherd claimed to have been visited by the Holy Spirit, which instructed him to fight the Moors in Iberia. Similar to the 1251 crusade, this movement included mostly young men, women, and children. They marched to Paris to ask Philip V to lead them, but he refused to meet with them at all. While in Paris they liberated prisoners in the Grand Châtelet.
Baldwin I of Jerusalem
Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont on 27November 1095. Godfrey of Bouillon decided to join the military campaign and sold or mortgaged his inherited domains to raise funds. One of his domains, the County of Verdun, was seized by Richer, Bishop of Verdun, who soon granted it to Baldwin. The dissolution of Godfrey's allodial lands deprived all future dukes of the basis of their authority in Lower Lotharingia, which facilitated Baldwin's decision to take the Cross. Eustace III of Boulogne also joined the crusade. According to a letter from Pope Urban, only the army that Peter the Hermit had mustered for the People's Crusade outnumbered the three brothers' force.
Crosses in heraldry
Heraldry emerged in western Europe at the start of the 13th century out of earlier traditions.
The Christian cross was used as a field sign by the Christian troops during the Crusades. 
In 1188, Kings Henry II of England and Philip II of France agreed to launch the Third Crusade together, and that Henry would use a white cross and Philip a red cross. The red-on-white cross came to be used by the Knights Templar, and the white-on-red one by the Knights Hospitaller (also white-on-black); the Teutonic Order used a black-on white version. Early cross or spiral-like shield decorations, not necessarily with Christian symbolism, are already found on depictions of shields of the 11th century.
History of Western civilization
In 1095, Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to re-conquer the Holy Land from Muslim rule, when the Seljuk Turks prevented Christians from visiting the holy sites there. For centuries prior to the emergence of Islam, Asia Minor and much of the Mid East had been a part of the Roman and later Byzantine Empires. The Crusades were originally launched in response to a call from the Byzantine Emperor for help to fight the expansion of the Turks into Anatolia. The First Crusade succeeded in its task, but at a serious cost on the home front, and the crusaders established rule over the Holy Land. However, Muslim forces reconquered the land by the 13th century, and subsequent crusades were not very successful. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291. Other campaigns in Spain and Portugal (the Reconquista), and Northern Crusades continued into the 15th century. The Crusades had major far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts on Europe. They further served to alienate Eastern and Western Christendom from each other and ultimately failed to prevent the march of the Turks into Europe through the Balkans and the Caucasus.
Seljuk Empire
During the First Crusade, the fractured states of the Seljuqs were generally more concerned with consolidating their own territories and gaining control of their neighbours than with cooperating against the crusaders. The Seljuqs easily defeated the People's Crusade arriving in 1096, but they could not stop the progress of the army of the subsequent Princes' Crusade, which took important cities such as Nicaea (İznik), Iconium (Konya), Caesarea Mazaca (Kayseri), and Antioch (Antakya) on its march to Jerusalem (Al-Quds). In 1099 the crusaders finally captured the Holy Land and set up the first Crusader states. The Seljuqs had already lost Palestine to the Fatimids, who had recaptured it just before its capture by the crusaders.
First Crusade
The great French nobles and their trained armies of knights, however, were not the first to undertake the journey towards Jerusalem. Urban had planned the departure of the first crusade for 15 August 1096, the Feast of the Assumption, but months before this, a number of unexpected armies of peasants and petty nobles set off for Jerusalem on their own, led by a charismatic priest called Peter the Hermit. Peter was the most successful of the preachers of Urban's message, and developed an almost hysterical enthusiasm among his followers, although he was probably not an "official" preacher sanctioned by Urban at Clermont.
History of the Catholic Church
Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095 when he received an appeal from Byzantine emperor Alexius I to help ward off a Turkish invasion. Urban further believed that a Crusade might help bring about reconciliation with Eastern Christianity. Fueled by reports of Muslim atrocities against Christians, the series of military campaigns known as the Crusades began in 1096. They were intended to return the Holy Land to Christian control. The goal was not permanently realized, and episodes of brutality committed by the armies of both sides left a legacy of mutual distrust between Muslims and Western and Eastern Christians. The sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade left Eastern Christians embittered, despite the fact that Pope Innocent III had expressly forbidden any such attack. In 2001, Pope John Paul II apologized to the Orthodox Christians for the sins of Catholics including the sacking of Constantinople in 1204.
Religion in Medieval England
Participation in the Crusades was also seen as a form of pilgrimage, and the same Latin word, "peregrinatio", was sometimes applied to both activities. While English participation in the First Crusade between 1095–99 was limited, England played a prominent part in the Second, Third and Fifth Crusades over the next two centuries, with many crusaders leaving for the Levant during the intervening years. The idea of undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was not new in England, however, as the idea of religiously justified warfare went back to Anglo-Saxon times. Many of those who took up the Cross to go on a Crusade never actually left, often because the individual lacked sufficient funds to undertake the journey. Raising funds to travel typically involved crusaders selling or mortgaging their lands and possessions, which affected their families and, at times, considerably affected the economy as a whole.
Deus vult
The battle cry of the First Crusade is reported in the "Gesta Francorum", written by an anonymous author associated with Bohemond I of Antioch shortly after the successful campaign, in 1100 or 1101. According to this description, as the Princes Crusade gathered in Amalfi in the late summer of 1096, there assembled a large number of crusaders, armed and bearing the sign of the cross on their right shoulders or on their backs, crying in unison ""Deus le volt, Deus le volt, Deus le volt"". The "Historia belli sacri", written somewhat later, c. 1131, also cites the battle cry.
Crusades
The success of the First Crusade inspired 12th-century popes such as CelestineIII, InnocentIII, HonoriusIII, and GregoryIX to call for military campaigns with the aim of Christianising the more remote regions of northern and north-eastern Europe. These campaigns are known as the Northern Crusades. The Wendish Crusade of 1147 saw Saxons, Danes, and Poles attempt to forcibly convert the tribes of Mecklenburg and Lusatia, who were Polabian Slavs or "Wends". CelestineIII called for a Crusade in 1193, but when Bishop Berthold of Hanover responded in 1198, he led a large army into defeat and to his death. In response, InnocentIII issued a bull declaring a Crusade, and Hartwig of Uthlede, Bishop of Bremen, along with the Brothers of the Sword brought all of the north-east Baltic under Catholic control. Konrad of Masovia gave Chelmno to the Teutonic Knights in 1226 as a base for a Crusade against the local Polish princes. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword were defeated by the Lithuanians, so in 1237 GregoryIX merged the remainder of the order into the Teutonic Order as the Livonian Order. By the middle of the century, the Teutonic Knights completed their conquest of the Prussians before conquering and converting the Lithuanians in the subsequent decades. The order also came into conflict with the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Pskov and Novgorod Republics. In 1240 the Orthodox Novgorod army defeated the Catholic Swedes in the Battle of the Neva, and, two years later, they defeated the Livonian Order in the Battle on the Ice.
History of Islam
Beginning in the 8th century, the Iberian Christian kingdoms had begun the Reconquista aimed at retaking Al-Andalus from the Moors. In 1095, Pope Urban II, inspired by the conquests in Spain by Christian forces and implored by the eastern Roman emperor to help defend Christianity in the East, called for the First Crusade from Western Europe which captured Edessa, Antioch, County of Tripoli and Jerusalem.
Children's Crusade
In the first movement, Nicholas, an eloquent shepherd from the Rhineland in Germany, tried to lead a group across the Alps and into Italy in the early spring of 1212. Nicholas said that the sea would dry up before them and allow his followers to cross into the Holy Land. Rather than intending to fight the Saracens, he said that the Muslim kingdoms would be defeated when their citizens converted to Catholicism. His disciples went off to preach the call for the "Crusade" across the German lands, and they massed in Cologne after a few weeks. Splitting into two groups, the crowds took different roads through Switzerland. Two out of every three people on the journey died, while many others returned to their homes. About 7,047 arrived in Genoa in late August. They immediately marched to the harbor, expecting the sea to divide before them; when it did not many became bitterly disappointed. A few accused Nicholas of betraying them, while others settled down to wait for God to change his mind, since they believed that it was unthinkable he would not eventually do so. The Genovese authorities were impressed by the little band, and they offered citizenship to those who wished to settle in their city. Most of the would-be Crusaders took up this opportunity. Nicholas refused to say he was defeated and traveled to Pisa, his movement continuing to break up along the way. He and a few loyal followers continued to the Papal States, where they met Pope Innocent III. The remaining ones departed for Germany after the Pontiff exhorted them to be good and to return home to their families. Nicholas did not survive the second attempt across the Alps; back home his father was arrested and hanged under pressure from angry families whose relatives had perished while following the child.
Crusades (TV series)
The first episode recounts Byzantine Emperor Alexius's appeal to Pope Urban II for help in fighting Muslim Turks, the first crusaders as they neared Jerusalem, and the first casualties of The Crusades: Jews massacred in Worms and Cologne.
Crusades
Five major sources of information exist on the Council of Clermont that led to the First Crusade: the anonymous " Gesta Francorum " (The Deeds of the Franks), dated about 1100–01; Fulcher of Chartres, who attended the council; Robert the Monk, who may have been present, and the absent and Guibert de Nogent. These retrospective accounts differ greatly. In his 1106–07 "Historia Iherosolimitana", Robert the Monk wrote that Urban asked western Roman Catholic Christians to aid the Orthodox Byzantine Empire because "Deus vult" ("God wills it") and promised absolution to participants; according to other sources, the pope promised an indulgence. In these accounts, Urban emphasises reconquering the Holy Land more than aiding the emperor, and lists gruesome offences allegedly committed by Muslims. Urban wrote to those "waiting in Flanders" that the Turks, in addition to ravaging the "churches of God in the eastern regions", seized "the Holy City of Christ, embellished by his passion and resurrection – and blasphemy to say it – have sold her and her churches into abominable slavery". Although the pope did not explicitly call for the reconquest of Jerusalem, he called for military "liberation" of the Eastern Churches.
First Crusade
The successful Princes' Crusade was preceded by the "people crusade", which was a popular movement 
instigated by Peter the Hermit in the spring of 1096. Mobs of peasants and laymen travelled to Anatolia where they came up against the Turks, on the way attacking populations of Jews in the Rhineland. They were decisively defeated at the Battle of Civetot in October.
Crusade of 1197
The Crusade of 1197, also known as the Crusade of Henry VI () or the German Crusade ("Deutscher Kreuzzug") was a crusade launched by the Hohenstaufen emperor Henry VI in response to the aborted attempt of his father, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa during the Third Crusade in 1189–90. 
Thus the military campaign is also known as the "Emperor's Crusade" (echoing the name "Kings' Crusade" given to the Third Crusade).
Crusades
The Crusades consolidated the papal leadership of the Latin Church, reinforcing the link between Western Christendom, feudalism, and militarism and increased the tolerance of the clergy to violence. The growth of the system of indulgences became a catalyst for the Protestant Reformation in the early 16thcentury. The Crusades also had a role in the creation and institutionalisation of the military and the Dominican orders as well as the Medieval Inquisition.
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.
History of Europe
The Viking Age, a period of migrations of Scandinavian peoples, occurred from the late 8th century to the middle 11th century. The Normans, descendants of the Vikings who settled in Northern France, had a significant impact on many parts of Europe, from the Norman conquest of England to Southern Italy and Sicily. The Rus' people founded Kievan Rus', which evolved into Russia. After 1000 the Crusades were a series of religiously motivated military expeditions originally intended to bring the Levant back under Christian rule. The Crusaders opened trade routes which enabled the merchant republics of Genoa and Venice to become major economic powers. The Reconquista, a related movement, worked to reconquer Iberia for Christendom.
Northern Crusades
The Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were religious wars undertaken by Catholic Christian military orders and kingdoms, primarily against the pagan Baltic, Finnic and West Slavic peoples around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, and to a lesser extent also against Orthodox Christian Slavs (East Slavs). The crusades took place mostly in the 12th and 13th centuries and resulted in the subjugation and forced baptism of indigenous peoples.
Christian forces of the First Crusade
Among the nobles whose affiliations are not known are: Charles I, Count of Flanders, who is said to have travelled with an armada in 1107 (see above);  Berengar Raymond II, Count of Barcelona, who took the cross as penance for the murder of his brother;  Bernard II, Count of Besalú, took the cross for the First Crusade but remained in Spain at the counseling of the pope;  Fernando Díaz, one of the few Spaniards to participate in the Crusades; and  Erard I, Count of Brienne, either went on the First Crusade or on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1097.
First Crusade
This situation of multiple possible causes or motivations for the crusades has led to extended debates in modern historiography. A theory proposed by Carl Erdmann (1935), known as the "Erdmann thesis", links the First Crusade l to the Gregorian Reform, the series of reforms initiated by Pope Gregory VII during c. 1050–80. These reforms re-established the Western Church, which had been much weakened during the 10th century, as a relevant power able to inspire and co-ordinate the crusades. 
The "Erdmann thesis" proposes that the strengthened Western Church, combined with the weakened Byzantine Empire, permitted a projection of power from west to east, with the actual conquest of Jerusalem figuring at best as a secondary, popular goal.
Christianity in the Middle Ages
The First Crusade captured Antioch in 1099 and then Jerusalem. The Second Crusade occurred in 1145 when Edessa was retaken by Islamic forces. Jerusalem would be held until 1187 and the Third Crusade, famous for the battles between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. The Fourth Crusade, begun by Innocent III in 1202, intended to retake the Holy Land but was soon subverted by Venetians who used the forces to sack the Christian city of Zara. Innocent excommunicated the Venetians and crusaders. Eventually the crusaders arrived in Constantinople, but due to strife which arose between them and the Byzantines, rather than proceed to the Holy Land the crusaders instead sacked Constantinople and other parts of Asia Minor effectively establishing the Latin Empire of Constantinople in Greece and Asia Minor. This was effectively the last crusade sponsored by the papacy; later crusades were sponsored by individuals. Thus, though Jerusalem was held for nearly a century and other strongholds in the Near East would remain in Christian possession much longer, the crusades in the Holy Land ultimately failed to establish permanent Christian kingdoms. Islamic expansion into Europe would renew and remain a threat for centuries culminating in the campaigns of Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the crusades in southern Spain, southern Italy, and Sicily eventually lead to the demise of Islamic power in the regions; the Teutonic knights expanded Christian domains in Eastern Europe, and the much less frequent crusades within Christendom, such as the Albigensian Crusade, achieved their goal of maintaining doctrinal unity.
The Great Crusades
The Great Crusades began when Brian Krumm and Brian Hunt, both of whom were then students at the University of Illinois in Champaign, started an art-pop band called the Suede Chain. The band released several albums on the Parasol Records imprint Mud Records before breaking up in 1997. Krumm then started writing new music of a very different style, influenced by such artists as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, and the Replacements, and Uncle Tupelo. The result was the Great Crusades' first album under that name, 1998's "The First Spilled Drink of the Evening".
History of antisemitism
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns sanctioned by the Papacy in Rome, which took place from the end of the 11th century until the 13th century. They began as endeavors to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims but developed into territorial wars.
Crusades
Minor Crusading efforts lingered into the 14thcentury, and several Crusades were launched during the 14th and 15th centuries to counter the expansion of the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. In 1309 as many as 30,000 peasants gathered from England, north-eastern France, and Germany proceeded as far as Avignon but disbanded there. Peter I of Cyprus captured and sacked Alexandria in 1365 in what became known as the Alexandrian Crusade; his motivation was as much commercial as religious. LouisII led the 1390 Barbary Crusade against Muslim pirates in North Africa; after a ten-week siege, the Crusaders signed a ten-year truce.
List of sources for the Crusades
Relevant eastern (Muslim) historiographies include works by Ali ibn al-Athir (d. 1233), 
Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad (d. 1234), Abd al-Latif (d. 1231), Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217), Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282), Abu al-Feda (d. 1331).
Contemporary Muslim historiographers such as Ali ibn al-Athir refer to the Crusades as the "Frankish Wars" (). The term used in modern Arabic, "ḥamalāt ṣalībiyya", lit. "campaigns of the cross" is a loan translation of the term "crusade" as used in Western historiography. 
Later Muslim historiography did not focus on the Crusades as a single or coherent event. One main reason for this is that the Crusades in retrospect figure as more of a marginal issue compared to the final collapse of the Caliphate under the Mongol invasions and the eventual replacement of Arab rule by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which suppressed Arab nationalism for the following seven centuries. The end of the "Islamic Golden Age" was thus only partially due to the Crusades, and more so to the Turkic and Mongol expansions. According to modern historians of Islamic history such as Murphy (1976) and Mansfield (2003), the collapse of the Caliphate led to the development of "intellectual barriers" and "isolationist policies" in the Muslim world.
Sigurd the Crusader
In 1107, Sigurd led the Norwegian Crusade to support the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem which had been founded after the First Crusade. He was the first European king to lead a crusade, and his feats earned him the nickname "Jorsalafari". Sigurd possessed a total force of about 5000 men in about 60 ships, as recorded by the sagas. The two kings, Øystein and Sigurd, initially disputed about who should lead the contingent and who should remain home to rule the kingdom. Sigurd was eventually chosen to lead the crusade, possibly because he was a more experienced traveler, having been on several expeditions with his father, Magnus III, to Ireland and islands outside Scotland.
Religious war
During the time of the Crusades, some of those who fought in the name of God were recognized as the "Milites Christi", soldiers or knights of Christ.
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns that took place during the 11th through 13th centuries against the Muslim Conquests. Originally, the goal was to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims, and support the besieged Christian Byzantine Empire against the Muslim Seljuq expansion into Asia Minor and Europe proper. Later, Crusades were launched against other targets, either for religious reasons, such as the Albigensian Crusade, the Northern Crusades, or because of political conflict, such as the Aragonese Crusade. In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II raised the level of war from "bellum iustum" ("just war"), to "bellum sacrum" ("holy war"). In 16th-century France there was a succession of wars between Roman Catholics and Protestants (Hugenots primarily), known as the French Wars of Religion. In the first half of the 17th century, the German states, Scandinavia (Sweden, primarily) and Poland were beset by religious warfare in the Thirty Years War. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism figured in the opposing sides of this conflict, though Catholic France did take the side of the Protestants but purely for political reasons.
Persecution of Muslims
The coming of the Crusades (starting with the massacre of Barbastro) and similarly entrenched positions on the northern African Almoravids, who took over al-Andalus as of 1086, added to the difficult coexistence between communities, including Muslims in Christian ruled territory, or the Mozarabic rite Christians (quite different from those of the northern kingdoms), and further minority groups. The Almohads, a fanatic north African sect, pushed the boundaries of religious intolerance during their occupation of al-Andalus, affecting also the Jews.
During the expansion south of the northern Christian kingdoms, depending on the local capitulations, local Muslims were allowed to remain (Mudéjars) with some restrictions, while some were assimilated into the Christian faith. After the conquest of Granada, all the Spanish Muslims were under Christian rule. The new acquired population spoke Arabic or Mozarabic, and the campaigns to convert them were unsuccessful. Legislation was gradually introduced to remove Islam, culminating with the Muslims being forced to convert to Catholicism by the Spanish Inquisition. They were known as Moriscos and considered New Christians. Further laws were introduced, as on 25 May 1566, stipulating that they 'had to abandon the use of Arabic, change their costumes, that their doors must remain open every Friday, and other feast days, and that their baths, public and private, to be torn down.' The reason doors were to be left open so as to determine whether they secretly observed any Islamic festivals. King Philip II of Spain ordered the destruction of all public baths on the grounds of them being relics of infidelity, notorious for their use by Muslims performing their purification rites. The possession of books or papers in Arabic was near concrete proof of disobedience with severe repercussions. On 1 January 1568, Christian priests were ordered to take all Morisco children between the ages of three and fifteen, and place them in schools, where they should learn Castillian and Christian doctrine. All these laws and measures required force to be implemented, and from much earlier.
First Crusade
The First Crusade (1095–1099) was the first of a number of crusades that attempted to recapture the Holy Land, called for by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095. 
Urban called for a military expedition to aid the Byzantine Empire, which had recently lost most of Anatolia to the Seljuq Turks. 
The resulting military expedition of primarily Frankish nobles, known as the Princes' Crusade, not only re-captured Anatolia but went on to conquer the Holy Land (the Levant), which had fallen to Islamic expansion as early as the 7th century, and culminated in July 1099 in the re-conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Crusades
Following Innocent III's Fourth Council of the Lateran, crusading resumed in 1217 against Saladin's Ayyubid successors in Egypt and Syria for what is classified as the Fifth Crusade. Led by Andrew II of Hungary and Leopold VI, Duke of Austria, forces drawn mainly from Hungary, Germany, Flanders, and Frisia achieved little. Leopold and John of Brienne besieged and captured Damietta but an army advancing into Egypt was compelled to surrender. Damietta was returned and an eight-year truce agreed. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was excommunicated for breaking a treaty obligation with the Pope that required him to lead a crusade. However, since his marriage to Isabella II of Jerusalem gave him a claim to the kingdom of Jerusalem, he finally arrived at Acre in 1228. Frederick was culturally the Christian monarch most empathetic to the Muslim world, having grown up in Sicily, with a Muslim bodyguard and even a harem. His great diplomatic skills meant that the Sixth Crusade was largely negotiation supported by force. A peace treaty was agreed upon, giving Latin Christians most of Jerusalem and a strip of territory that linked the city to Acre, while the Muslims controlled their sacred areas. In return, an alliance was made with Al-Kamil, Sultan of Egypt, against all of his enemies of whatever religion. The treaty and suspicions about Frederick's ambitions in the region made him unpopular, and he was forced to return to his domains when they were attacked by Pope Gregory IX. While the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy were in conflict, it often fell to secular leaders to campaign. What is sometimes known as the Barons' Crusade was led by Theobald I of Navarre and Richard of Cornwall; it combined forceful diplomacy and the playing of rival Ayyubid factions off against each other. This brief renaissance for Frankish Jerusalem was illusory, being dependent on Ayyubid weakness and division following the death of Al-Kamil.
Siege of Edessa (1144)
The County of Edessa was the first of the crusader states to be established during and after the First Crusade. It dates from 1098 when Baldwin of Boulogne left the main army of the First Crusade and founded his own principality.
Sectarian violence among Christians
Although the First Crusade was initially launched in response to an appeal from Byzantine EmperorAlexios I Komnenosfor help in repelling the invading Seljuq Turks from Anatolia, one of the lasting legacies of the Crusades was to "further separate the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity from each other."
List of sources for the Crusades
Greek Orthodox historians:
Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene, John Kinnamos, Niketas Choniates, Nicephorus Gregoras, George Acropolites.
The Eastern Orthodox view of the Crusades is dominated by the sack of Constantinople and the establishment of the Frankokratia in the Fourth Crusade in 1204. While the First Crusade was declared upon the request of the Byzantine Emperor, and concluded in triumphal success, the Crusades as a whole 
resulted in the terminal decline of the Byzantine Empire. Although the Byzantine Emperors were restored in 1260,
the empire could never fully recover until eventually, weakened by civil wars, it fell to the Ottomans in 1453.
Christianization
The Northern Crusades (or "Baltic Crusades") were crusades undertaken by the Catholic kings of Denmark and Sweden, the German Livonian and Teutonic military orders, and their allies against the pagan peoples of Northern Europe around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. Swedish and German campaigns against Russian Eastern Orthodox Christians are also sometimes considered part of the Northern Crusades.
Some of these wars were called crusades during the Middle Ages, but others, including most of the Swedish ones, were first dubbed crusades by 19th-century romantic nationalist historians. Lithuania and Samogitia were ultimately Christianized from 1386 until 1417 by the initiative of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila and his cousin Vytautas.
Jewish history
Sermonical messages to avenge the death of Jesus encouraged Christians to participate in the Crusades. The twelfth century Jewish narration from R. Solomon ben Samson records that crusaders en route to the Holy Land decided that before combating the Ishmaelites they would massacre the Jews residing in their midst to avenge the crucifixion of Christ. The massacres began at Rouen and Jewish communities in Rhine Valley were seriously affected.
History of the Middle East
Africa was reviving, however, as more organized and centralized states began to form in the later Middle Ages after the Renaissance of the 12th century. Motivated by religion and conquest, the kings of Europe launched a number of Crusades to try to roll back Muslim power and retake the Holy Land. The Crusades were unsuccessful but were far more effective in weakening the already tottering Byzantine Empire. They also rearranged the balance of power in the Muslim world as Egypt once again emerged as a major power.
Crusades
The Arabic loanword "Muslim" is first attested in English in the 17th century. Before this the common term for Muslim was "Saracen", in origin referring to the pre-Islamic, non-Arab inhabitants of the desert areas around the Roman province of Arabia. The term evolved to include Arab tribes, and by the 12th century it was an ethnic and religious marker in Medieval Latin literature corresponding to modern "Muslim".
Middle Ages
The crusades were intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II (pope 1088–99) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) for aid against further Muslim advances. Urban promised indulgence to anyone who took part. Tens of thousands of people from all levels of society mobilised across Europe and captured Jerusalem in 1099. One feature of the crusades was the pogroms against local Jews that often took place as the crusaders left their countries for the East. These were especially brutal during the First Crusade, when the Jewish communities in Cologne, Mainz, and Worms were destroyed, as well as other communities in cities between the rivers Seine and the Rhine. Another outgrowth of the crusades was the foundation of a new type of monastic order, the military orders of the Templars and Hospitallers, which fused monastic life with military service.
Christianity in the 11th century
The Crusades were, in part, an outlet for an intense religious piety which rose up in the late 11th century among the lay public. A crusader would, after pronouncing a solemn vow, receive a cross from the hands of the Pope or his legates and was thenceforth considered a "soldier of the Church". This was partly because of the Investiture Controversy, which had started around 1075 and was still on-going during the First Crusade. As both sides of the Investiture Controversy tried to marshal public opinion in their favor, people became personally engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. The result was an awakening of intense Christian piety and public interest in religious affairs, and was further strengthened by religious propaganda, which advocated Just War in order to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims. The Holy Land included Jerusalem (where the death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus took place) and Antioch (the first Christian city).
Crusades
The two-century attempt to recover the Holy Land ended in failure. Following the First Crusade there were six major Crusades and numerous less significant ones. After the last Catholic outposts fell in 1291, there were no more Crusades; but the gains were longer lasting in Northern and Western Europe. The Wendish Crusade and those of the Archbishop of Bremen brought all the North-East Baltic and the tribes of Mecklenburg and Lusatia under Catholic control in the late 12th century. In the early 13th century the Teutonic Order created a Crusader state in Prussia and the French monarchy used the Albigensian Crusade to extend the kingdom to the Mediterranean Sea. The rise of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th century prompted a Catholic response which led to further defeats at Nicopolis in 1396 and Varna in 1444. Catholic Europe was in chaos and the final pivot of Christian–Islamic relations was marked by two seismic events: the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 and a final conclusive victory for the Spanish over the Moors with the conquest of Granada in 1492. The idea of Crusading continued, not least in the form of the Knights Hospitaller, until the end of the 18th-century but the focus of Western European interest moved to the New World.
Cross Crusade
The first Cross Crusade was held in 1993, and was an expansion of a three-race series called First Mud, which had only included elite participants, and which had been held since the mid-1980s.
History of the Jews and the Crusades
Robert Chazan's "In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews" provides details as to the changes made in Jewish/Christian relations as a result of the First Crusade. He focuses on whether or not the crusades really had a salient impact on the Jews of the time and in the future, pointing out that persecution was nothing new to them, yet also talking about the importance of their being made extremely distinct within the European community by the crusades. They were no longer part of it to any great extent, but rather were made out to be part of the "others" as many in Europe already had been, such as atheists and pagans.
List of Billy Graham's crusades
Billy Graham's crusades were evangelistic campaigns conducted by Billy Graham between 1947 and 2005. Billy Graham conducted 417 crusades in 185 countries and territories on six continents. The first Billy Graham evangelistic campaign, held September 13–21, 1947, in the Civic Auditorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was attended by 6,000 people. He would rent a large venue, such as a stadium, park, or street. As the sessions became larger, he arranged a group of up to 5,000 people to sing in a choir. He would preach the gospel and invite people to come forward to ask Jesus to be their saviour and pray together. The inquirers were often given a copy of the Gospel of John or a Bible study booklet. In Moscow, in 1992, one-quarter of the 155,000 people in Graham's audience went forward at his call. During his crusades, he has frequently used the altar call song, "Just As I Am".
First Crusade
The causes of the Crusades in general, and particularly of the First Crusade, is widely debated among historians. 
While the relative weight or importance of the various factors may be the subject of ongoing disputes, it is clear that the First Crusade came about from a combination of factors in both Europe and the Near East.
Its origin is linked both with the political situation in Catholic Christendom, including the political and social situation in 11th-century Europe, the rise of a reform movement within the papacy, as well as the military's and religious confrontation of Christianity and Islam in the East.
Christianity in the 11th century
The Holy Land had been part of the Roman Empire, and thus Byzantine Empire, until the Islamic conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. Thereafter, Christians had generally been permitted to visit the sacred places in the Holy Land until 1071, when the Seljuk Turks closed Christian pilgrimages and assailed the Byzantines, defeating them at the Battle of Manzikert. Emperor Alexius I asked for aid from Pope Urban II for help against Islamic aggression. Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom in a speech made at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095, combining the idea of pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war against infidels.
The First Crusade captured Antioch in 1099 and then Jerusalem. A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades totals nine during the 11th to 13th centuries.
Crusades
Both Philip I of France and Emperor HenryIV were in conflict with Urban and declined to participate in the official crusade. However, members of the high aristocracy from France, western Germany, the Low countries, and Italy were drawn to the venture, commanding their own military contingents in loose, fluid arrangements based on bonds of lordship, family, ethnicity, and language. Foremost amongst these was the elder statesman, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse. He was rivalled by the relatively poor but martial Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred from the Norman community of southern Italy. They were joined by Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin I of Jerusalem in leading a loose conglomerate from Lorraine, Lotharingia, and Germany. These five princes were pivotal to the campaign that was also joined by a Northern French army led by Robert Curthose, Stephen, Count of Blois, and Robert II, Count of Flanders. The armies, which may have contained as many as 100,000 people, including non-combatants, travelled eastward by land to Byzantium where they were cautiously welcomed by the Emperor. Alexios persuaded many of the princes to pledge allegiance to him and that their first objective should be Nicaea, which Kilij Arslan I had declared the capital of the Sultanate of Rum. Having already destroyed the earlier People's Crusade, the over-confident Sultan left the city to resolve a territorial dispute, enabling its capture in 1097 after a Crusader siege and a Byzantine naval assault. This marked a high point in Latin and Greek co-operation and also the start of Crusader attempts to take advantage of political and religious disunity in the Muslim world: Crusader envoys were sent to Egypt seeking an alliance.
The Complete History
Ibn al-Athir characterizes the advent of the crusades as an issue of political intrigue and its historical importance in terms of Frankish conquest, as merely one event within a continuous pattern. He attributes the origin to the happenings of 1085-86, when the Franks first invaded Islamic lands in Andalusia, and connects the crusades with the conquest of Sicily in 1091.
Siege of Acre (1291)
The 14th century saw some other crusades organized, but these enterprises differed in many ways from the 11th- and 12th-century expeditions which are properly called Crusades. The crusades of the 14th century aimed not at the recapture of Jerusalem and the Christian shrines of the Holy Land, but rather at checking the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe. While many of the crusaders in these 14th-century undertakings looked upon the defeat of the Ottomans as a preliminary to the ultimate recapture of the Holy Land, none of the later crusades attempted any direct attack upon Palestine or Syria.
Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad
The original "Assassin's Creed" takes place in 1191. During the Third Crusade, the Crusaders' armies clash with Saracens, fighting over control of the Holy City of Jerusalem. Altaïr is tasked by Al Mualim to find and retrieve a sacred object: The Chalice. It is said to have the power to unite under one flag all the factions of whatever side possesses it - in order to win the final battle. But the Chalice is too powerful an object to be left in the hands of men alone – it must be found and destroyed quickly. After learning that the Chalice is kept in Jerusalem, Altaïr manages to arrive before the Templar leader, Robert de Sable. There, he successfully rescues the Apple of Eden from a group of Templars. There it is revealed that the Chalice is a woman named Adha, whom Altaïr knew and had feelings for before the events of the game. From her, he learns that the Templars have paid off Harash, the second-in-command of the Assassins, to betray the Brotherhood. Altaïr then plans to attack Alep (the Assassin fortress), kill Harash, and run away with Adha, but after making his way through Harash's Assassin guards and killing him, Adha is kidnapped by Robert and taken to the Templars' port in Acre.