Crusades question???

Question

What were the political, religious, economic, and cultural causes for the Crusades, and what was the lasting impact of them?

Answer 1

political reasons: get more power and peasants to could stop being serfs and actually be richer, religious: to get the holy land back, economic: in the middle east the land was much better so they would have more land and it would be more fertile than in europe, cultural: so the poe of Catholic church could be the head of the eastern orthodox chucrch AND the catholic church. their lasting impact is that they led to the end of feudalism(dats as much as i can remember)

Answer 2

Ah, what were the Crusades all about? Basically, the idea of the Crusades is for "Christians" to defeat the "Infidels" and teach them a thing or two. There were 9 major crusades during the 11th through the 13th centuries and other "unnumbered" crusades through the 16th century. (Note: this was during the "Dark Ages" that began at the beginning of the 5th century and lasted until the Renaissance which began in Italy.)
The original Crusade was sent to rescue Jerusalem, the Holy Land, from the Muslim. The political consequences were alliances were made and broken all over Europe and between European countries and the mid-east.
Economically many "families" were ruined. At that time, the rich merchants and lords and nobles had the most money, unlike the modern times when the Government controls most of the money and resources. As was the case with William the Conqueror in 1066, those who had the wealth promised others a fortune for success.
Culturally, the crusaders found out that they were fighting against a people who were far advanced in science and math (the word algebra comes from the Muslims). Find pictures of Alhambra and compare it to the castles of the French, Germans, English and Spanish peoples of the same time period and you will get a good idea. The crusades also resulted in so many deaths that the population of the ENTIRE world rose from about 275,000,000 to 450,000,000 from the year 1000 to the year 1500. Trade routes were opened; products from England found their way to the mid-East; products from the Muslims found their way to Western Europe. Probably very few people changed their religion as a result, but they certainly learned about other cultures. After the "numbered" crusades, Protestantism arose, loosening the hold that the Church helf over nations and little by little, politics removed itself from religion.

Answer 3

Not sure what Raindog is talking about.

It was non other than the Popes themselves who gave the call to crusade in the name of a holy act (religious).

Even chrisitan theologians are aware of the all too often revisionist work done in Christianity. This is one reason there are so many different versions of bibles and affiliations.

The Crusades were different from the rest of man's inhumanity to man due to the New Testament.

Answer 4

Its not the dark ages, it was the middle ages. Dark ages was after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, 476 to around 1060ish.

The first few crusades were more or less to get the holy land back from Islamic invaders. The fourth crusade is where it starts to get shady with the sacking of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantium, which was a Christian city.

Answer 5

Many answers take many things for granted.

How were muslims any more of invaders of the Holy Land than the European crusaders? They were both invaders.

I have to vote the crusades were christians trying to express their beliefs in the same way muslim terrorists today do not believe in live and let live. Same thing. As a matter of fact, the muslim terrorists use the christian crusades as one of their excuses today.

Those bible quotes given here were a real eye opener. I did not know those things.

Answer 6

In Europe, the fuedal system produced a large class of landless nobility (only the eldest son inherited the title and land of his father). They were restless for action and the Church used the opportunity to recruite an army to gain control of the Middle East from the Muslim invaders who had invaded the lands at the fall of the Roman Empire. IT was also a response to the Muslim invasion of Europe that reached the Balkans, Spain and even raided Rome. Also, most of the commerce in the spices and goods of India passed through an overland route throught the Middle East and by gaining control of those lands the landless nobility had an opportunity to control this trade and to carve for themselves new properties in the Holy Land.

Answer 7

First of all, you can't really refer to the various episodes of Europeans trying to win back the Holy Land known as "The Crusades" in terms of one monolithic event. Each of the seven crusades, (four major, three minor), were different. They were different in terms of their motivations, participants, their key events and their outcomes. Here’s a very short summary but it’s composed entirely from my memory.

Most of the crusades, (but not all), were motivated by three factors.

The first was greed, the second peace, and the third, piety. (This matrix would be most clearly shown in the First Crusade.)

European royal society had adopted the custom of all of the father’s fortune going to the eldest male heir. This left any other surviving male heirs in a precarious posistion. For example, a second son could perhaps be sent to seminary and eventually be made a bishop but a third son would have to make his own way if he ever wanted to be his own man free of his brother’s house. For awhile, second and third sons could go off into the European wilderness as knights and earn their fortunes battling pagan barbarians. But eventually, as Europe was Christianized, land began to be in short supply. This would soon leave Christian fighting Christian for each other’s land. The head of Western Christendom, the Pope in Rome, was horrified by this notion. He tried various tactics to stem the bloodshed, like declaring “Truces of God”, (which forbid fighting on holy days), with little success.

Thus the idea of a crusade to reclaim the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land sought to kill two birds with one stone. Idle rich nobility could go to the Middle East to earn their fortunes and at the same time, Christians could stop killing others Christians.

Piety played a role too of course. A sense of religious devotion motivated the more common folk, those who loathed to leave their farms for any extended period of time, as their farm was usually their livelihood. Fighting for a Christian-controlled Holy Land was the best act of penitence one could ever do.

Many wishing to bash the Catholic Church or Christianity in general often overemphasize the role the Church played in the crusades. Yes, religious piety did play a big role but the Church itself played a smaller one. Only three of the seven had anything to do with the Church as an institution and only two were directly called for by the Church. And under no circumstances did it ever call for women and children to be butchered. (Yes, it did happen but the blame should be addressed towards Christians, not the Church or Christianity in total. For faith, any religious faith, can not always be held accountable for what its followers do.)

Recapping causes directly; land hunger played the biggest role, more so than any population expansion. Europe was headed towards overpopulation but it wasn't there yet and ultimately the "Black Death" would take care of that problem. Religious fervor factored in but really only for the rank and file soldier.

The lasting impact? That depends on how far forward you want to go. For example, a rather direct impact was the weakening of the Byzantine Empire. Once that empire collapsed, it allowed for the spread of the Turkish Ottomans into Southeastern Europe. Today, the only lasting impact is probably the memory that lives in the minds of Arab Muslims.

Answer 8

The central cause behind the crusades were Christian bible passages where Jesus was said to have no mercy on those who did not belive in him. Crusaders acted on those words by killing those who were not like them.

One of the most famous versus used to stir up Crusaders was Luke 19:27, "Take my enemies, who would not have me rule before them, bring them here, and kill them before me."

There are others...Matthew 10:34, "I have not come to send peace to the world, but the sword."

Also, John 15:6, "He who does not abide by me is thrown away like a withered branch, cast into a fire, and burned."

There are others. Many of us can argue there were no reasons for the Crusades other than trying to fulfill the words of Jesus.

There have been conquests, wars, and a whole array of battles and pillaging in history, but what singles out the fuel for the crusades, were the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as administered by church leaders as high as the Pope himself.

And tragically, it did not stop with the crusades. Inquisitions, edicts of eviction, pogroms, and even the holocause of WWII, had the church and the names of too many popes, on the high end of the list of ingredients.

I know many religious christians dont want to be made aware of this, but neither did those whose blood was spilled in the name of their religion.

Answer 9

–1192), additionally conventional as a results of fact the King's marketing campaign, replaced into an attempt via eu leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin. After the failure of the 2nd marketing campaign, the Zengid dynasty under Nur advert-Din controlled a unified Syria and engaged in conflict with the Fatimid rulers of Egypt. The participation of the Crusader States in this conflict ultimately resulted in the unification of Egyptian and Syrian forces under the command of Saladin, who employed them to lessen the Christian states and to recapture Jerusalem in 1187. the hot pope, Gregory VIII, proclaimed that the seize of Jerusalem replaced into punishment for the sins of Christians for the era of Europe. Henry II of england and Philip II of France ended their conflict with one yet another, implementing a "Saladin tithe" on their electorate to finance a sparkling marketing campaign. The elderly Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa replied to the call immediately, taking on the go at Mainz Cathedral on March 27, 1188, and commencing up for the Holy Land in could of 1189 with a militia of over one hundred,000 adult men. After some militia successes, the Christian powers argued over the spoils of conflict; annoyed with Richard, Frederick's successor Leopold V of Austria and Philip left the Holy Land in August 1191. On September 2, 1192, Richard and Saladin finalized a treaty via which Jerusalem could proceed to be under Muslim administration, yet which additionally allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims to flow to the city. Richard departed the Holy Land on October 9. The failure of the third marketing campaign could deliver approximately the call for a Fourth marketing campaign six years later.

Answer 10

I was all about bashing the Muslims because that is what they thought their imaginary friend, Geezus, wanted them to do... it was also a chance to rape and pilliage in the name of Geezus.