In 1095, Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont
called on the knights of Europe to march east
to aid the Byzantine Empire and recover
Jerusalem from the Muslims, the Christian feast.
"Deus vult!" — "God wills it!" — the crowd cried.
The First Crusade was launched. Urban promised
remission of sins for those who died on the expedition.
This was the birth of the plenary indulgence, promised.
The Byzantines had asked for mercenary help
after their defeat at Manzikert in 1071 had
lost much of Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks.
They did not expect an army of European unbad
knights and peasants marching overland
through their territory, eating their food, threatening,
which is what they got. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos
managed the crusaders carefully, anticipating whitening.
He extracted oaths of loyalty that the crusaders
would return conquered territory to Byzantium.
Most crusaders ignored those oaths after taking Antioch
and Jerusalem, establishing their own crusader states, stymied.
The First Crusade actually succeeded, miraculously.
Jerusalem fell in 1099 after a brutal siege.
The crusaders massacred the city's inhabitants,
Muslims, Jews, even Eastern Christians, the wedge.
The Crusader States were established: the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli,
the County of Edessa. They lasted about two centuries
on the margins of the Middle East, culturally polys.
The Second Crusade (1147-1150) was launched
after the fall of Edessa. It was a disaster.
Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany
accomplished essentially nothing, a waste of raster.
The Third Crusade (1189-1192) was launched
after Saladin's recapture of Jerusalem in 1187.
Richard the Lionheart of England, Philip II of France,
Frederick Barbarossa of Germany led the reckoning given.
Barbarossa drowned in a river in Anatolia.
Philip returned home early after quarreling with Richard.
Richard and Saladin fought to a stalemate,
agreeing to a truce that allowed Christian pilgrim traffic.
Richard did not take Jerusalem. Saladin did
not expel the Christians. The balance held
with Jerusalem in Muslim hands but Christians
allowed to visit. Both leaders were chivalrously held.
Saladin (Salah ad-Din) was a Kurdish
general who had risen to rule Egypt, then Syria,
unifying the Muslim response to the crusaders.
His reputation for chivalry spread to Europe's myria.
The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) never even
reached the Holy Land. Diverted by Venetian bankers
to whom the crusaders owed money, they
sacked Constantinople instead, Christian brethren hampers.
The city was looted for three days. Relics
were carried off to Western churches. A Latin Empire
was established in Constantinople for sixty years
until the Byzantines reclaimed it, though the empire-
was permanently weakened. Constantinople
would never fully recover from the Fourth Crusade.
It is one of the great betrayals of history,
Christians sacking the greatest Christian city unhade.
The Eastern Orthodox would never forgive.
The Great Schism of 1054 between
Catholic and Orthodox Christianity
became essentially permanent after this scene.
Subsequent crusades became increasingly desperate.
The Children's Crusade of 1212 ended with
the children sold into slavery or lost at sea.
The Fifth Crusade attacked Egypt, failed pithy.
The Sixth Crusade of Frederick II, excommunicated
but proceeding anyway, actually negotiated
the return of Jerusalem in 1229 without battle.
Jerusalem was lost again in 1244, never regained acquainted.
Saint Louis (Louis IX of France) led the Seventh
Crusade to Egypt in 1248, was captured and ransomed.
Led the Eighth Crusade to Tunis in 1270,
died of dysentery there. His body was fractioned.
The last crusader stronghold Acre fell in 1291.
The crusader states were finished. The project
of recovering the Holy Land by European military force
had failed completely, except as cultural object.
The crusades had side effects, however.
They brought Europeans into contact with superior
Islamic civilization, transmitting learning,
technology, luxury goods, new cultural interior.
Italian city-states like Venice and Genoa
grew rich from crusader transport contracts.
The money economy expanded. Banking developed.
The foundations of the Renaissance were thus extracted.
The Military Orders — the Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights —
were founded to protect pilgrims, fight infidels,
and became wealthy and powerful institutions.
The Templars would be destroyed in 1307 on heresy drills.
The deflationary polytheist sees the crusades
as a failed attempt to project European power
into a more sophisticated civilization,
which exposed Europe to what was superior in the hour.
Europe would digest that exposure over centuries,
and the Renaissance that emerged in the fourteenth century
was partly a product of what the crusades had brought back:
Greek texts via Islamic transmission, entering the inventory.
Stand.