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Global History IR
Study Guide #33 The Crusades
The Early Crusades. In 1095, Pope Urban II made an impassioned
speech that urged all men of faith to wage a great war, or Crusade, to
take back the Holy Land for Christ. Those that joined the fight wore a
cross sewn on their clothes and became known as crusaders, or those
“marked with a cross.” Motivations for joining the Crusades included
fighting for God and being cleansed of sin, acquiring land and wealth,
improving trade with Byzantium, and searching for adventure.
The first crusaders were bands of untrained peasants who left for
the Holy Land in 1096. Along the way they attacked anyone, including
European Jews, whom they felt to be enemies of Christ. Although they
were destructive, they were no match for the trained Turkish warriors
and were quickly defeated.
Successive forces led by French and Norman nobles faced many
difficulties on the way to the Holy Land. Nonetheless, they took over
the cities of Antioch and Jerusalem, killing tens of thousands of people
along the way. They set up four states in the conquered territory:
Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, and Jerusalem, dividing them into fiefs. This
crusade succeeded largely because the Muslim forces were disunited.
The successes of the First Crusade were short-lived as the Muslims
regained Edessa and Jerusalem, and the Second and Third Crusades to
recapture these cities ended in failure.
Later Crusades. Despite these failures, the Crusades continued into
the 13th century. The pope persuaded a group of French knights to
mount a Fourth Crusade, but because they did not have enough money
for their trip, they allied with Venetian merchants to attack the
Christian cities that were commercial rivals. Eventually they also
attacked the Byzantine Empire, looting Constantinople. Later Crusades
could not hold back the Muslim advance, and in 1291 Muslims
recaptured the last Christian stronghold at Acre.
Although the crusaders mainly directed their efforts against
Muslims in the Holy Land, Christian zeal (and desire for plunder)
carried the wars even further. Christian knights also targeted Spain,
driving the Spanish Muslims, or Moors, off the Spanish peninsula
almost entirely.
The Crusade Against Heresy. While the crusaders fought against the
Muslim “infidels,” the popes also directed efforts toward Christians
accused of heresy. In 1208 the pope called for a crusade against the
Albigensians, a group of Christians in southern France whose beliefs
contradicted those of the Roman Catholic Church. Because the local
townspeople and nobles supported the Albigensians, the war lasted for
almost 20 years, destroying the region. The crusading spirit also
resulted in the Inquisition, an arm of the church designed to look
into charges of heresy and to prosecute those found to be heretics.
The Crusade in the North. In northern Europe, the passion of the
Crusades coincided with the economic colonization of eastern Germany
and Poland. The king of Hungary enlisted the help of the Teutonic
Knights, an order of soldier monks, to help him defeat pagan tribes in
northeastern Europe. Later the knights almost completely wiped out
the pagan peoples living in Prussia, bringing the region under Christian
influence.
By the 1500s, the order of knights broke the territory into secular
domains and established feudalism in the area. They encouraged the
growth of towns and the development of trade. Under their protection,
northern German cities joined together to form the Hanseatic League,
which eventually oversaw most of the trade between Europe, the Baltic,
and Russia.
Answer the questions below in your own words and in complete sentence. Highlight
your evidence. Also read pages 290-293 in your textbook Create Cornell notes based
on the textbook. Use the Cornell notes template
1. Why did the Crusades begin?
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2. Why were crusaders motivated to fight?
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3. What was the outcome of the early Crusades?
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4. How did the crusading spirit manifest itself within Europe?
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5. What happened when Christian knights attacked Spain?
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6. How did the Crusades affect northeastern Europe?
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