HIST 1301 | History: Later Crusading

THE POST-ROMAN WEST and THE CRUSADING MOVEMENT HIST 1301 | History Later Crusading Following the Third Crusade, passion for the cause declined, but the movement persisted. In 1202, one of the most influential popes of the Middle Ages, Pope Innocent III, issued a summons for a fresh crusade. The overland routes across Anatolia had been problematic from the beginning and were something the crusaders wished to avoid. They also intended to avoid the Byzantine Empire, as religious strife and treason charges had exacerbated tensions between the leaders of the Crusades and the Byzantine emperors. These crusaders requested direct transportation to the Holy Land by ships from Italian towns. In exchange, the leader of Venice requested that the crusaders assault Zara, a Christian port city on the Dalmatian coast that was Venice's competitor. Upon the crusaders' consent, the pope became enraged and banished them. The crusaders proceeded to Constantinople, where they got embroiled in the internal affairs of the Byzantine Empire. Following a convoluted attempt to install a pro-crusader emperor on the throne, they stormed the city and sacked it. A metropolis that had withstood innumerable adversaries for over a millennium had been destroyed. The incident was a profound breach of the principles of the crusades and Greek Christians. The crusading activity and ties between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches suffered significant harm even as the Catholics founded the brief Latin Empire of Constantinople. Later, there was considerable enthusiasm for crusades, but Egypt was the main target since it was seen as a crucial basis for dominating the Holy Land. However, subsequent crusades lost ground to the French and grew less effective in achieving their objectives, at least with regard to establishing Christian rule over the Holy Land. Louis IX, the king of France, was a crusader who led the Seventh and Eighth Crusades against Muslim powers in North Africa before passing away there from sickness. (He became St. Louis after being canonised.) The Crusader States came to an end in 1291 with the fall of the harbour city of Acre in modern-day Israel. Practice and experience also changed the ideal of the crusader. The popes of today declared holy wars, not only to free Jerusalem but also to combat the adversaries of the church. Crusades were called against heretics in France, non-Christians in the Baltic areas, and even the personal adversaries of the pope in Italy. The indulgence, which allows one to lessen the amount of penance required for a sin by donating money to the church directly or by covering the cost of masses or other clerical services, became a typical benefit that crusaders began to anticipate. They may also count on having their property safeguarded and being exempt from taxes or feudal dues. By the thirteenth century, crusading had grown widespread, and many families had adopted the practice of travelling on family crusades as a habit. The struggle looked to be conducted not just in the Middle East but also against nonChristians of all stripes, and the popes sometimes called for Christian knights and aristocracy to fight against Muslims. Relationships between Christians, Muslims, and Jews were never exclusively characterised by conflict during the Middle Ages, but the perception of Muslims and Jews as enduring foes of Christian culture that emerged during the Crusades had a detrimental effect that has persisted throughout Europe and beyond, even to this day. The notion of the crusades lost favour towards the end of the Middle Ages. This resulted from the resurgence of royal power in the fourteenth century, as well as the papacy's decreasing power. Popes who were well-liked and thought of as reformers and men of virtue had started the Crusades. With time, they began to resemble the assiduously dedicated clerics who had fought monarchs for the independence of the church less and less about their personal wealth and status. One of the more well-known crusading organisations, the Knights Templar, was accused by the French monarch of blasphemy and apostasy (rejecting Christianity) at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The popes dissolved the order, mostly to appease the French monarch, and the order's founders were put to death for heresy. The growth of strong Islamic kingdoms in the Middle East, such as the Mamluks in Egypt and subsequently the Ottoman Turks in Anatolia, guaranteed that crusades to capture Jerusalem proved impracticable even as Christian kingdoms spread throughout the Baltic and Iberian Peninsula. Kings and nobles shifted their focus to establishing nation-states and waging internal dynastic conflicts. Crusade language continued to influence conflicts between Christians and non-Christians, but these disputes frequently aided the political objectives of kings and other rulers who were prepared to work with the pope in exchange for its approval.