Natasha Stevenson's List: Ancient History, Term 3, 2010: Motives for The First Crusade

• a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin^[ambiguous] Christian Europe
• to restore Christian control of the Holy Land
• 1095 and 1291
• • Highlights the political motivators for the Crusades
• Crusaders took vows and were granted penance for past sins
• political enemies of the various popes.
• • Interesting since the essence of this war places further sins on these crusaders
• Because of internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions were diverted from their original aim
• ssociation as the place of nativity, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians regard as the Saviour or Messiah
• he Holy Land had become a predominantly Christian region
• Jerusalem in particular holds a significance in Islam as the site of the ascension into heaven of the prophet Muhammad whom Muslims believe to be the foremost prophet of God and Jerusalem is often regarded as the third most sacred site in Islam
• Jerusalem also holds historical and religious importance for Jews as it is the site of the Western Wall the last remaining piece of the Second Temple. Jews consider Israel as their ancestral homeland, and had been visiting the city since its sack by the Romans and abandonment by the Hebrews after the Hebrew revolt of AD 66-73.
• he immediate cause of the First Crusade was the Byzantine emperor Alexios I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire
• The papacy of Pope Gregory VII had struggled with reservations about the doctrinal validity of a holy war and the shedding of blood for the Lord and had, with difficulty, resolved the question in favour of justified violence. More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land were being persecuted.
• ustified the use of force in the service of Christ in The City of God, and a Christian "just war" might enhance the wider standing of an aggressively ambitious leader of Europe
• Pope Urban II, a crusade would serve to reunite Christendom, bolster the Papacy, and perhaps bring the East under his control.
• the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious Christian fury that was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of "schismatic" Orthodox Christians of the east.
• Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, promising those who died in the endeavor would receive immediate remission of their sins.^[17]

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