Hi, everybody. We're back today to talk about the crusades.
Now there were a lot of different factors that led to the sustained outbreak of violence for almost two centuries
between the Christian western world and the
Muslim-dominated Middle East. We'll start with a longer term factor -
that being the
pretty long and a very involved process of knighthood back home in Europe. This may seem like a strange starting point.
But bear with me here for just a moment.
Knights were mounted warriors -  those on horseback. And their training
oftentimes took years - really more than a decade for a young boy who wanted to start along the path of knighthood
to enter into the service of his lord and to serve him faithfully for a number of years. First as a page -
basically kind of an errand boy while he is still young, between the ages of about 7 and 12-13 -
running errands, listening to stories about the great knights of old, Sir Lancelot and the Knights of the Round Table.
They were kind of watching what's going on first.
Then the second stage of becoming a knight was when he became a squire. And now he's a little bit older.
He's into his teenage years. And he can assume some of the physical duties
associated with becoming a future knight -
 that is taking care of horses, learning how to sharpen or repair weapons, setting up camp,
battle strategy - all these sorts of things. And I mentioned, this very long process of knighthood.
Because at the end of more than a decade's worth of training you would undergo a dubbing ceremony.
You can see a picture here of a medieval lord about to dub or
announce a new knight.
During this ceremony if you were a future knight
you would promise your undying loyalty or fealty to the lord under whom you had served for so long.
Now over time this private ceremony that was just between a medieval lord and a future knight -
gradually the ceremony started to become attended by members of the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe.
So that at the same time you kneel before  your lord and promised your undying loyalty
- to fight to your dying breath for his honor - you would also take an oath of loyalty to
the Roman Catholic Church.
So that if the church ever needed your services that you would also be ready to mount up and go fight for said reason.
Well, the problem from the standpoint of many newly-minted knights,
especially by the 10th and 11th centuries AD, is that increasingly internal warfare in Europe is dying down.
We're beyond the Viking invasions at this point. A lot of these kingdoms have already sort of settled down into their
respective domains and while there is a little bit of internal fighting in Europe, it's nothing like what had happened during the early middle ages
where you would constantly be called out to battle, sometimes for months on end -
perhaps years on end. All of that is settling down by the late Middle Ages.
So you have all these sort of freshly graduated knights
who are restless. You know they're ready to go out and showcase their skills in battle.
But they don't really have an avenue to do that. So unfortunately,
what some of them will do is they'll start picking on the peasantry back home in Europe.
Some of them will be so full of testosterone and the fighting spirit they will start attacking innocent civilians - raping, pillaging
just causing mayhem. The pope -
successive Popes actually, will have to sort of get on to members of the knighthood
essentially saying "You guys need to settle down. Okay? You are fighting against your own people. These are not godly acts."
"Just relax a little bit"
Another way in which these medieval knights would sort of blow off steam would be to stage mock battles.
So this is where we think of the tournaments that were held in which they would have jousting
competitions or swordsmanship competitions in which they could sort of practice their skills.
And some of these tournaments actually got pretty bloody.
In some cases people were killed,
even though that was not the intent of these. This was more of a way to showcase your skills and hone your skills.
So I mentioned how restless and bored
the European knighthood by the 11th century was because when the Catholic Church
sends out a call for an armed invasion of the so-called Holy Lands
you've got people who were more than ready to go. You have an existing
willing army that are ready to do the church's bidding. So when we talk about what the crusades were, a good working definition
would be that they ended up being a series of armed invasions of the Muslim-controlled holy lands by Christian Europeans.
There will be a number of crusades. There were nine formal crusades and
perhaps as many as 13 in total several informal crusades - just groups of individuals that would
take it upon themselves to mount up and start marching to the Middle East. But when we talk about the Holy Lands
We're talking about Jerusalem, Bethlehem.
We're talking about Judea, Samaria.
For Christian Europeans these lands held tremendous religious significance as they were the sites of Jesus of Nazareth's life
and death. These sites are also of tremendous
religious significance to Jewish people. So there are many Jews living in the Holy Lands during this period.
These regions are also of tremendous importance to Muslims.
In fact, at this point in time the Holy Lands had already been under Muslim
domination for hundreds and hundreds of years without any problems. So when we look at why now -
why during the late 11th and early 12th century AD when we see the first of what will become a series of crusades declared
by the Roman Catholic Church -
we need to understand that it was more recent
developments that led to this change that led to the Catholic Church's call to attack.
So when we talk about the reasons behind the crusades, I've already mentioned sort of a longer term
reason, which is to say a bored class of knights ready to go out and bust some heads in -
ready to do a job. And then for shorter term reasons - the second point -
we're going to start to see that the Muslim leadership in Palestine, the area around Jerusalem, will change. And
instead of a previously very
tolerant policy that most
leaders had towards Christian pilgrims - that is to say Christians who were traveling to the Holy Lands to visit Bethlehem,
to visit Nazareth, what have you -
previously Muslim leaders had no problem with these Christian pilgrims coming in. You might think of it as tourism for them.
So this is a moneymaker as far as they're concerned. But that changes during the 11th century. For example, in Palestine
you have a new leader there by the name of Hakim who starts actually turning on Christian pilgrims. He starts
encouraging people to rob some of these Christian visitors to the Holy Lands.
Not only that, he will take over the Church of the holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem - a very
sacred Christian site - and re-appropriate it as a mosque
These things - when word filters back to Pope Urban II in Rome,
when he begins to hear that
it's no longer safe for Christians to travel to these holy sites, he decides to formulate a plan.
He is also urged to action by the fact that the Byzantine Empire - that former eastern half of the Roman empire -
the Byzantine Empire is also calling upon the Roman Catholic Church for armed military assistance. In this case
we'll see that the Byzantine emperor Alexius I
is under attack by Seljuk Turks coming from the east. And these Seljuk Turks are also Muslims.
From his standpoint
He is calling upon his fellow Christians in the west  - in Rome and also in a bigger sense in western Europe -
he's asking them to offer some military assistance. So from the standpoint of Pope Urban II, head of the Roman Catholic Church,
this presents a unique opportunity and one that he cannot pass up.
This is a chance for him to possibly take
Christian control of the Holy Lands and in the process help out their Christian brothers in the east in the Byzantine Empire .
And maybe - keep fingers crossed from his standpoint -
maybe if he helps out the Byzantines he can reunite the Christian Church all under his leadership.
We've got a couple of other factors here that I have listed on the screen - the lure of making money, the promise of instant
salvation. I want to show you the text of a speech that was given by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont
this is to Initiate or begin the very first crusade.
I'll let you read that when you get a chance. But basically he's trying to incite the crowd. He's trying to offer reasons why
you should join this crusade,
why should put your life on hold back home in Europe, mount up and travel all the way to
the Holy Land. And what he's doing here is he's basically trying to paint the enemy in as
unkind of a light as possible,
accusing them of all sorts of tortures and rapes/
But also -
it's not here in this particular part of the speech - he will also offer a few more
inducements or enticements to those who maybe are still not quite sure if they want to join the crusades.
He will offer, for example, the chance to make money. He will argue before the
assembled crowd that the crusaders will most certainly win.
Because according to him God is on their side. And to the victors go the spoils. So if you want to join us,
we're Gonna win.
We're going to take over the Holy Lands, according to Pope Urban II. And then you'll be able to loot wealth there and come
back home perhaps a very influential individual.
Not only that but in the same speech he will make the promise of instant
salvation for anyone who dies in service of the Roman Catholic Church.
This is a very, very powerful lure for many people who might have been afraid of their salvation.
Perhaps they'd done some things before that weren't all that great. And to hear from the pope's mouth - and the pope is considered to
be in western Christianity
God's representative on Earth, so if the pope says it, it is God's wil -l
when they hear that the pope says "Look you come and join us in service of the church. If you die,
instant heaven - instant pearly gates", people believe him. And this will lead a number to join in the first crusade.
Here's a map of
the route that the
first crusaders took. You can see they're coming from various areas of western Europe. Their first destination is constantinople to help out the byzantines
to help fight back the Seljuk Turks.
You can see this orange shaded area where the Seljuk Turks had already taken over tremendous amounts of territory.
The first crusaders will stop there.
They will continue on to Antioch and  defeat Muslim forces there in 1098. And then the ultimate prize for them in the first crusade
will be capturing the city of Jerusalem here in
1099.
When that takes place there will be a wholesale slaughter of all the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem.
Just like there were Jewish residents of the Holy Lands before the crusades, they're there now.
There were Christian residents of Jerusalem and Muslim residents.
When the crusading Europeans came into the city they did not stop and ask what religion you were. They came in
swords brandished going from household to household slaughtering everyone. So many, many innocent people
who were not even Muslims - the supposed target of the crusaders - many innocent people
died at the hands of the invaders. And the main reason why
the first crusade was so successful from the standpoint of Christian Europeans
was, as I have listed here on the screen here, the Arab world at that time was kind of caught off guard.
They were deeply divided for political reasons. For example,
you have the Seljuk Turks who were not willing to share power with the Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa.
You have religious reasons as well. You have Sunni versus Shia
factionalism in many areas of the middle East. So these guys were not able to mount a common defense -
to be able to repel the invading Europeans. That will change, however,
with a number of individuals - most notably Salah al-Din (Saladin),
Sultan of Egypt in Syria.
He was actually a Sunni Kurdish warrior who managed to - through force - bring together these previously
squabbling groups in the Middle East and say "Look, if we don't band together
these guys are going to take over more territory
and we'll never be able to get them out of our backyard".
Saladin was crucial in a number of ways. He also helped recapture Jerusalem from the crusaders
In 1187. So that city was only under Christian control for less than 100 years. He will show remarkable tolerance,
however, to Christians and Jews there. He will actually work out a deal where even though
Jerusalem comes back under Muslim control they will reopen the city and surrounding
areas for the peaceful and safe passage of Christian pilgrims there.
Eventually when we talk about the effects of the crusades, all of the so-called crusader states that were established by Europeans
will ultimately revert back to the control of local Muslim leaders. So the crusades
ultimately are a failure from the standpoint of western Europeans. They do not manage to gain
permanent control of the Holy Lands.
But there are still several important after-effects. The crusaders, coming through many of these Italian port cities like Pisa,
Genoa and Rome - that's lots of money flowing into these cities.
And it's going to create a very wealthy merchant class in many of these Italian city-states
that will be important for our later discussion of
the Renaissance. We'll also see, obviously, increased religious intolerance between the Christian world and the Muslim world.
But perhaps surprisingly, you can see this first-hand account of the Christian Crusaders massacring Jews
back home in Europe in the city of Mainz, which was in the German territories.
This is going to lead to a lot of anti-Antisemitism and the the wholesale killing of
thousands of Jews back home in Europe.
