Motivation for Crusades Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Motivation for Crusades - Essay ExampleThe Moslems themselves kept the routes open to Christians, and the Byzantine empire safe, until 1071, when Seljuk Turks took the lands, and persecuted Christians on the way. Lost land, spiritual conflict, and internal pressures were the background to Western Europes initiation of the Crusades. R.W. Southern notes that The decline position of the Eastern Empire, and the genuine desire of some to save it the even more potent though secret desire of others to profit by its disintegration the dim realization that Islam constituted athreat to Christendomsome hoped to be salve by going others didnt care if they were damned so long as they found new handle for profit and adventure. There was something in the Crusades to appeal to everyone. (Southern, 56)The crusades were, as Riley-Smith states A holy war fought against those perceived to be external or internal foes of Christendom for the recovery of Christian property or in defence of the church or Christian people (Riley-Smith, 1987, xxviii). This was certainly the overt motivation for the first Crusade, as initiated by pope Urban II in November of 1095. This Crusade had a peculiar beginning, and Riley-Smith has made extensive note of this hardly a(prenominal) nobles turned up, and the theatre must have been riskyeven so, his appeal for knights to liberate Jerusalem struck a fit in in western society (Riley Smith, 1995). Urban openly declared Dieu le veult - God wills it (Bishop, 105) for many hearing the unearthly leader of the Western World declaring Gods Will, the Crusades must have seemed to be a religious duty. In considering wherefore this speech made such an impression, it should not be forgotten that the majority of Western Europe was, by this time, Christian in name at the very least. Europeans had been making the arduous pilgrimage to Jerusalem for decades, and in some ways the early Crusades might be considered another form of pilgrimage. Personal penance an d exculpation by faith were still quite strong issues of faith, and would remain so until at least the mid-fourteenth blow (Flagellants during the Black Death being one example of this). Being a Crusader, not only armed combat for Christ but also traveling to the Holy Land to do so, was therefore a religious duty, atonement for sin, and a Holy Quest, similar to that being written about in Early gallant romances. In fact, it seems as though Urban did not intend to have such a salient effect upon the nobles of Europe the impression is that The pop was taken aback by the success of his proposal. No blueprint had been made for the prosecution of the crusade (Bishop, 106). The organization of the First Crusade was rather like a mopping-up exercise, later the disastrous Peoples Crusade in 1096. Poor people such as this marched under their own travel to free Jerusalem, and rather than the idealism of the nobility, their motivations appear to be genuine religious concern for the Hol y Land. It should be clear, therefore, that the overt motivation, religion, was also an emotional force for many of the participants in the first Crusades, Kings and princes, such as Richard I of England, who were not struggling to maintain a fief, were probably