First Crusades Research Paper

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The First Crusade, fought between the years 1096 and 1099, was initiated by Pope Urban II and was a series of political and religious wars. These crusades were started in an attempt to re-capture Jerusalem. Pope Urban II gave a dramatic speech, urging Christians to swarm towards Jerusalem and take their holy land away from the Muslims. He initiated the First Crusades in order to help the Christian Byzantine Empire, which was under attack by Muslim Seljuk Turks. Pope Urban III bribed the soldiers, offering them a remission of the sins they confessed in exchange for their loyalty in the crusades. The Christian knights, inspired by Pope Urban’s speech, joined the crusade and massacred, Jerusalem’s Muslim and Jewish people, along with other peoples.…show more content…
In 1099, during the attack on Jerusalem, the Crusader army took Jerusalem by force and massacred the population. The author defines a holy war as “a religious goal, the direct intervention of God, sanctified violence, and a belief that the dead in battle were martyrs-define a holy war” (Rubenstein 3). While today are familiar with the concept of a holy war due to our exposure to radical terrorist groups and suicide bombers, the people of early eleventh-century Europe did not yet understand this concept. In the past, wars had been fought over land or over inheritance, but with the First Crusade comes an entirely new level of warfare. I personally agree with historians when they call the First Crusade a “holy war”. This is the first real example in history where people are fighting for their church, and the first time people use the church to justify the people they kill. In the past, war was seen as a “necessary evil” (Rubenstein 3). Before the crusades, a leader would get a blessing from the Pope before going into battle. After the battle, the soldiers would be given penance for the sins they committed during combat, and the people they killed. In the First

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