Crusades, The

In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks seized Palestine and Asia Minor from the Arabs and the Eastern emperor respectively. Threatened with imminent danger across the Bosporus, the emperor at Constantinople appealed for help to Pope Urban II. The opportunity to expand papal influence prompted the pope to undertake the expulsion of the Turks from the Holy Land. The response was enthusiastic, and in 1096 the enterprise was set in motion and lasted nearly two centuries. Before the First Crusade was organized a horde of peasants led by Peter the Hermit started off but were massacred on the way. Another crowd of two hundred thousand were killed in Hungary. Godfrey of Bouillon and an army of nobles and their followers succeeded in reaching Constantinople and established a feudal principality, called the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and a Latin patriarchate. A second crusade enlisted royal support in France and Germany when the Mohammedans threatened fifty years later to expel the Christians who garrisoned the country, but dissensions ruined the expeditions. A third crusade was deemed necessary when Saladin, prince of the Saracens, wrested the Holy Sepulcher from the Christians in 1187. The kings of England, France, and Germany joined in the expedition, but dissensions arose again and the best they could do was to make a truce with the Mohammedans, which permitted Christians to visit the tomb of Christ and to be exempt from taxation. A fourth expedition plundered Constantinople. The thirteenth-century saw the enthusiasm of the crusaders evaporate as other interests drew rulers in new directions. Later crusades did little more than get those involved killed.

Impact: The introduction of feudalism into Palestine resulted in the organization of military orders of knighthood of a semimonastic sort. To the Hospitalers, or Knights of St. John, which had been organized earlier, were added the Templars, who had a house near the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Teutonic Knights, who later distinguished themselves in a crusade against the pagan Prussians of northeastern Europe. Out of such knightly orders sprang chivalry, the flower of feudalism in Europe.