Summary Of Crusade

summary of crusade according Encyclopaedia Britanica

any of a series of European military expeditions, often counted at eight although numbering many more than that, which were directed against Muslim control of Jerusalem and the Christian shrine of the Holy Sepulchre and that took place from 1095 to 1270.During the 11th century, feudal Europe underwent revivals of both expansive commerce and religion. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and other holy places in the East became increasingly popular. At the same time, the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople (now Istanbul), was being threatened by the rising power of the Seljuq Turks. The Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus turned to Europe, specifically to the pope of the Roman church, for aid.At the church council meeting at Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II called for a Christian army to aid Alexius and to recapture the Holy Sepulchre. Armies were raised by such knights as Hugh of Vermandois, Bohemond, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and Robert of Flanders. Smaller, generally ill-organized bands were collected by sundry lesser warriors, adventurers, and zealots. Over the next two years they assembled in and around Constantinople and prepared to march south across what today is Turkey. After a long siege they captured the heavily fortified town of Antioch in 1098. On July 15, 1099, Jerusalem fell to the crusaders, and its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants were slaughtered. In the following decades the crusaders gained control of a narrow strip of the Palestine coast and established the kingdom of Jerusalem, the county of Tripoli, the principality of Antioch, and the county of Edessa, the so-called crusader states, under various European rulers.In 1144 the Seljuq ruler Zangi, who had established a strong Muslim state at Mosul, captured the city of Edessa from the crusaders. When news of Edessa's fall reached Europe, Pope Eugenius III called for the Second Crusade. During this Crusade, armies led by Emperor Conrad III of Germany and King Louis VII of France joined forces in Jerusalem in the spring of 1148 and with 50,000 men struck north at Damascus. They began a siege at Damascus but were forced to retreat by an army led by Zangi's successor, Nureddin, and the Second Crusade ended in humiliating failure. Nureddin occupied Damascus in 1154, and his nephew Saladin gained control of all of Egypt in 1169 and occupied Aleppo in 1183, thus encircling the crusader states. In 1187 Saladin destroyed most of Jerusalem's army in a battle at Hattin near the Sea of Galilee and on October 2 captured Jerusalem and most of the other European strongholds.Shocked by the fall of Jerusalem, Pope Gregory VIII called for the Third Crusade. The largest crusader army yet assembled set out under the command of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in May 1189, but Frederick's death by drowning a year later saved Saladin from having to confront him. In 1191 Richard I the Lion-Heart of England conquered the Byzantine province of Cyprus and then joined Phillip II Augustus of France in the siege of Acre. In July Acre fell and its inhabitants were slaughtered. After failing to reach Jerusalem, in 1192 Richard I negotiated a five-year peace treaty with Saladin that permitted European pilgrims access to holy shrines.The Fourth Crusade, called in 1198 by Pope Innocent III to strike against Egypt, took a bizarre course. The crusader army was unable to pay for ships and outfitting obtained from Venice and so agreed to assist the Venetians in capturing the city of Zara, in Hungary (now Zadar, Croatia), and then moving against Constantinople. Constantinople fell on April 13, 1204, and the crusaders sacked the city. The crusaders and Venetians then established the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which was to last a little over 60 years. Although the crusaders were repudiated by Pope Innocent III, the Fourth Crusade destroyed any hope of alliance between the Byzantine and Latin churches. It also mortally wounded the Byzantine Empire.A wave of revived crusading fervour in Europe produced the pathetic Children's Crusade of 1212, in which thousands of children were lost or sold into slavery. Three years later Innocent III called for another strike at the Muslim world. The Fifth Crusade, manned chiefly by French and German crusaders, captured Damietta, near the Nile, in 1219. Floods stopped a march on Cairo, and the crusade ended indecisively with an eight-year truce. This was the last crusade organized directly by the papacy. On the Sixth Crusade, Emperor Frederick II of Germany, who had been excommunicated for his many delays in setting out, negotiated in 1229 a treaty which returned Jerusalem to the Europeans for 10 years. In 1244, forced west by the advancing Mongols, the Khwarezmian Turks sacked Jerusalem with Egyptian help. King Louis IX of France launched another crusade in 1248, but the Seventh Crusade, like the Fifth, failed in Egypt. King Louis led the last of the numbered crusades, the Eighth, 22 years later, but shortly after landing in Tunis, most of the army, and Louis, died of disease.Although ill-starred expeditions continued to be launched, even into the 15th century, the era of the Crusades had come to an end. After the Mamluks of Egypt succeeded in driving back the Mongols from Syria, the Mamluk sultan Baybars I dealt harshly with the crusaders, many of whom had formed alliances with the Mongols. In 1268 the Mamluks captured Antioch and slaughtered all its inhabitants. Tripoli fell in 1289, and Acre, the last Latin outpost on the mainland, fell in 1291._

A History Of Church War

A HISTORY OF CHURCH WAR

It is’n crusade. It is Church war. It is’n spiritual war, it is politic, glory, gold, and hegemony. They used word Gospel is only false reason, to manipulate people. This is a history of church war, church terror and violence according Britanica Encyclopaedia.

The age of Iconoclasm: 717–867 The reigns of Leo III (the Isaurian) and Constantine V Almost immediately upon Leo's accession, the empire's fortunes improved markedly. With the aid of the Bulgars, he turned back the Muslim assault in 718 and, in the intervals of warfare during the next 20 years, addressed himself to the task of reorganizing and consolidating the themes in Asia Minor. Thanks to the assistance of the traditional allies, the Khazars, Leo's reign concluded with a major victory, won again at the expense of the Arabs, at Acroenos (740). His successor, Constantine, had first to fight his way to the throne, suppressing a revolt of the Opsikion and Armeniakon themes launched by his brother-in-law Artavasdos. During the next few years, internal disorder in the Muslim world played into Constantine's hands as the 'Abbasid house fought to seize the caliphate from the Umayyads. With his enemy thus weakened, Constantine won noteworthy victories in northern Syria, transferring the prisoners he had captured there to Thrace in preparation for the wars against the Bulgars that were to occupy him from 756 to 775. In no fewer than nine campaigns, he undermined Bulgar strength so thoroughly that the northern enemy seemed permanently weakened, if not crushed. Even the venom used by the iconodule chroniclers of Constantine's reign cannot disguise the enormous popularity his victories won him.In later centuries, the folk of Constantinople would stand by his tomb, seeking his aid against whatever enemy imperiled the city's defenses.Constantine's weak successors His successors all but let slip the gains won by the great iconoclast. Constantine's son Leo IV died prematurely in 780, leaving to succeed him his 10-year-old son, Constantine VI, under the regency of the empress Irene. Not much can be said for Constantine, and Irene's policies as regent and (after the deposition and blinding of her son at her orders) as sole ruler from 797 to 802 were all but disastrous. Her iconodule policies alienated many among the themal troops, who were still loyal to the memory of the great warrior emperor, Constantine V. In an effort to maintain her popularity among the monkish defenders of the icons and with the population of Constantinople, she rebated taxes to which these groups were subject; she also reduced the customs duties levied outside the port of Constantinople, at Abydos and Hieros. The consequent loss to the treasury weighed all the more severely since victories won by the Arabs in Asia Minor (781) and by the Bulgars (792) led both peoples to demand and receive tribute as the price of peace. A revolt of the higher palace officials led to Irene's deposition in 802, and the so-called Isaurian dynasty of Leo III ended with her death, in exile, on the isle of Lesbos.In the face of the Bulgar menace, none of the following three emperors succeeded in founding a dynasty. Nicephorus I (ruled 802–811), the able finance minister who succeeded Irene, reimposed the taxes that the Empress had remitted and instituted other reforms that provide some insight into the financial administration of the empire during the early 9th century. In the tradition of Constantine V, Nicephorus strengthened the fortifications of Thrace by settling, in that theme, colonists from Asia Minor.Taking arms himself, he led his troops against the new and vigorous Bulgar khan, Krum, only to meet defeat and death at the latter's hands. His successor, Michael I Rhangabe (811–813), fared little better; internal dissensions broke up his army as it faced Krum near Adrianople, and the resulting defeat cost Michael his throne. In only one respect does he occupy an important place in the annals of the Byzantine Empire. The first emperor to bear a family name, Michael's use of the patronymic, Rhangabe, bears witness to the emergence of the great families, whose accumulation of landed properties would soon threaten the integrity of those smallholders upon whom the empire depended for its taxes and its military service. The name Rhangabe seems to be a Hellenized form of a Slav original (rokavu), and, if so, Michael's ethnic origin and that of his successor, Leo V the Armenian (ruled 813–820), provide evidence enough of the degree to which Byzantium in the 9th century had become not only a melting-pot society but, further, a society in which even the highest office lay open to the man with the wits and stamina to seize it. Leo fell victim to assassination, but before his death events beyond his control had improved the empire's situation. Krum died suddenly in 814 as he was preparing an attack upon Constantinople, and his son, Omortag, arranged a peace with the Byzantine Empire in order to protect the western frontiers of his Bulgar empire against the pressures exerted by Frankish expansion under Charlemagne and his successors. Since the death of the fifth caliph, Harun ar-Rashid, had resulted in civil war in the Muslim world, hostilities from that quarter ceased. Leo used the breathing space to reconstruct those Thracian cities that the Bulgars had earlier destroyed. His work indicates the degree of gradual Byzantine penetration into the coastal fringes of the Balkan Peninsula, as does the number of themes organized in that same region during the early 9th century: those of Macedonia, Thessalonica, Dyrrhachium, Dalmatia, and the Strymon.The new emperor, Michael II, was indeed able to establish a dynasty—the Amorian, or Phrygian—his son Theophilus (829–842) and his grandson Michael III (842–867) each occupying the throne in turn, but none would have forecast so happy a future during Michael II's first years. Thomas the Slavonian, Michael's former comrade in arms, gave himself out to be the unfortunate Constantine VI and secured his coronation at the hands of the Patriarch of Antioch; this was accomplished with the willing permission of the Muslim caliph under whose jurisdiction Antioch lay. Thomas thereupon marched to Constantinople at the head of a motley force of Caucasian peoples whose sole bonds were to be found in their devotion to iconodule doctrine and their hatred of Michael's Iconoclasm. Assisted by Omortag and relying upon the defenses of Constantinople, Michael defeated his enemy, but the episode suggests the tensions beneath the surface of Byzantine society: the social malaise, the ethnic hostility, and the persisting discord created by Iconoclasm. All these may explain the weakness displayed throughout Theophilus' reign, when a Muslim army defeated the Emperor himself (838) as a prelude to the capture of the fortress of Amorium in Asia Minor. It may also explain the concurrent decline of Byzantine strength in the Mediterranean, manifest in the capture of Crete by the Arabs (826 or 827) and in the initiation of attacks upon Sicily that finally secured the island for the world of Islam. Iconoclasm certainly played its part in the further alienation of East from West, and a closer examination of its doctrines will suggest why this may have been._

canon of the church of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) and historian of the First Crusade; he gathered oral and written testaments of participants in the crusade and provided an important chronicle on the subject. Little is known about his life; he himself never visited the Holy Land. His work was completed around 1130 and still remains the chief authority on the First Crusade and the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem until 1120. The sole document on the People's Crusade of 1096, led by Peter the Hermit, Albert's history is a compilation of legends and eyewitness reports.

After King Louis's death in 1137, his successor, Louis VII, rejected Suger's role as principal adviser, and Suger concentrated all of his efforts for the next five years on completing the rebuilding of the church of Saint-Denis, which had fallen into decay. It is believed that he was the inspiration behind many of the architectural innovations employed in the project, which include an original use of the pointed (rather than round) arch and the ribbed vault and extensive use of stained glass, including a rose window in the facade.In 1142 Louis seized lands belonging to his most powerful vassal, Thibaut, count of Champagne. Civil war resulted. The support of the powerful Thibaut had always been vital to the French monarchy, and the young king was making war ferociously and irrationally. Suger stepped in as an active adviser to Louis VII, as he had always done with his father, and negotiated a peace treaty between Thibaut and Louis. The treaty was signed at the dedication ceremony of the church of Saint-Denis, an architectural marvel.As penance for the many lives that he had taken during the war with Thibaut, Louis VII was urged by Bernard of Clairvaux to lead a crusade to free the Holy Land from the Muslims. Suger was strongly opposed to this and tried unsuccessfully to change the king's mind. For the first time Suger stood in opposition to the wishes of the weak, young king as well as those of Bernard and the pope.On June 11, 1147, Louis and Queen Eleanor departed on the Second Crusade. Louis left his crown with Abbot Suger, who was appointed regent in his absence. The Crusade was a disastrous loss, but at home Suger governed well, despite the great financial drain on the funds at his disposal. He devised new and fairer means of taxation, passed laws preventing deforestation, and suppressed a revolt by a group of nobles who planned to make Robert, count of Dreux and brother of Louis VII, king in his absence. When in 1149 Louis returned from the Crusade, many believed that Suger would not return the crown, but they were proved wrong.In 1150 Suger himself, with Bernard, made plans for another crusade. But in 1150, before it was begun, Suger fell ill with malaria. He died in January 1151.Anne F. Rockwell

Pope from 1187 to 1191. He was cardinal bishop of Palestrina when elected pope on Dec. 19, 1187. In October 1187 Jerusalem fell to Saladin, the leader of the Muslim armies, and Clement called the Western princes to undertake the Third Crusade, the results of which were disappointing. In Italy the marriage of the German king Henry VI with Constance, the daughter of King Roger II of Sicily, threatened to unite south Italy with the German crown. Clement tried to avert this union by investing Count Tancred of Lecce with the fief of Sicily. He released the Scottish Church from the jurisdiction of the English see of York (1188), and the church became directly dependent on Rome.

1187, he was able to throw his full strength into the struggle with the Latin crusader kingdoms, his armies were their equals. On July 4, 1187, aided by his own military good sense and by a phenomenal lack of it on the part of his enemy, Saladin trapped and destroyed in one blow an exhausted and thirst-crazed army of crusaders at Hattin, near Tiberias in northern Palestine. So great were the losses in the ranks of the crusaders in this one battle that the Muslims were quickly able to overrun nearly the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem. Acre, Toron, Beirut, Sidon, Nazareth, Caesarea, Nabulus, Jaffa (Yafo), and Ascalon (Ashqelon) fell within three months. But Saladin's crowning achievement and the most disastrous blow to the whole crusading movement came on Oct. 2, 1187, when Jerusalem, holy to both Muslim and Christian alike, surrendered to Saladin's army after 88 years in the hands of the Franks. In stark contrast to the city's conquest by the Christians, when blood flowed freely during the barbaric slaughter of its inhabitants, the Muslim reconquest was marked by the civilized and courteous behaviour of Saladin and his troops.His sudden success, which in 1189 saw the crusaders reduced to the occupation of only three cities, was, however, marred by his failure to capture Tyre, an almost impregnable coastal fortress to which the scattered Christian survivors of the recent battles flocked. It was to be the rallying point of the Latin counterattack. Most probably, Saladin did not anticipate the European reaction to his capture of Jerusalem, an event that deeply shocked the West and to which it responded with a new call for a crusade. In addition to many great nobles and famous knights, this crusade, the third, brought the kings of three countries into the struggle. The magnitude of the Christian effort and the lasting impression it made on contemporaries gave the name of Saladin, as their gallant and chivalrous enemy, an added lustre that his military victories alone could never confer on him.The Crusade itself was long and exhausting, and, despite the obvious, though at times impulsive, military genius of Richard I the Lion-Heart, it achieved almost nothing. Therein lies the greatest—but often unrecognized—achievement of Saladin. With tired and unwilling feudal levies, committed to fight only a limited season each year, his indomitable will enabled him to fight the greatest champions of Christendom to a draw. The crusaders retained little more than a precarious foothold on the Levantine coast, and when King Richard left the Middle East in October 1192, the battle was over. Saladin withdrew to his capital at Damascus.Soon, the long campaigning seasons and the endless hours in the saddle caught up with him, and he died. While his relatives were already scrambling for pieces of the empire, his friends found that the most powerful and most generous ruler in the Muslim world had not left enough money to pay for his grave. Saladin's family continued to rule over Egypt and neighbouring lands as the Ayyubid dynasty, which succumbed to the Mamluks in 1250.