Crusades

The Crusades or Crusades in general is a term currently given to a group of campaigns and wars carried out by Europeans from the late eleventh century until the last third of the thirteenth century (1096 - 1291). In it, religious campaigns were carried out and under the emblem of the cross in order to defend it, in order to achieve their main goal, which is to control the holy lands such as Jerusalem. Therefore, they sewed on their clothes on the chest and shoulder the sign of the cross of red cloth. The main reason behind the fall of the Byzantines was the devastation caused by the first campaigns passing through Byzantium (the city of Constantinople), the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and the transformation of subsequent campaigns towards it. The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious nature that most of Christian Europe fought against what they viewed as external and internal threats. The Crusades were directed against a number of ethnic and religious groups that included Muslims, Slavic pagans, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, and political enemies of the popes. The Crusaders would take promises and give indulgences. Estimates put the number of casualties in the Crusades between 1 million and about 3 million. The aim of the Crusades was originally to seize Jerusalem and the Holy Land that was under Muslim control, and this base was originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire to help them against the expansion of Muslims represented by the Seljuks in Anatolia. The term crusades is also used to describe contemporary and later wars through campaigns up to the sixteenth century in the regions, which were not limited to the Levant only, but also targeted the pagans in northern Europe, and what the Christian belief considered as “heretics”, and the peoples subject to the prohibition of expulsion for a combination of religious reasons economic, and political reasons. The rivalries that erupted between Christians and Muslims alike over authority led to the emergence of alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Sultanate of Rome during the Fifth Crusade. The impact of the Crusades was far-reaching politically, economically, as well as socially, some of which have persisted into contemporary times. Due to internal conflicts between Christian kingdoms and political powers, some Crusader missions were diverted from the original goal, such as the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the invasion of Christian Constantinople and the division of the Byzantine Empire between Venice and the Crusaders. The Sixth Crusade was the first crusade without the Pope's blessing, and it established a precedent that political rulers had initiated a crusade without referring to the head of the Catholic Church. Modern historians have widely differing opinions about the Crusaders. For some, their behavior was inconsistent with the stated aims and tacit moral authority of the papacy, as evidenced by the fact that the Pope excommunicated the Crusaders on occasion. The Crusaders often looted as they traveled, and their leaders generally retained control of the captured lands rather than return them to the Byzantines. During the People's Crusade, many Jews were murdered in what are now called the Rhineland pogroms. Constantinople was occupied during the Fourth Crusade. However, the Crusades had a profound effect on Western civilization: the Italian city-states obtained major concessions in exchange for the help of the Crusaders and established colonies that allowed trade with eastern markets even in the Ottoman period, allowing Genoa and Venice to flourish. The Crusaders consolidated the collective identity of the Latin Church under the leadership of the papacy. They were the source of the narratives of heroism, chivalry, and piety that fostered medieval romance, philosophy, and literature. As was the result of the remaining crusades campaigns is that they increased the separation and schism of Western Christianity from its eastern counterpart, although the goal of sending the Catholic Church for the first campaign was originally theoretical to meet the invitation made by the Emperor of Byzantium Alexios I Komnenos to help repel the Seljuk invasions of Byzantium.