Catholic Church, Wealth, and Power - History
The power of the Popes and the wealth specifically properties of the Catholic Church experienced a remarkable growth during the Christian Crusades' history. The Popes role as well as authority extended to trading and commerce involvement, resources for the spread and sustenance of Christendom, and authority over the armies. In addition, the Pope's involvement with the people's social public sphere and public life as well as their intellectual development increased their influence and authority over the commoners. The community regarded them as powerful guides and brilliant leaders. The Crusaders also sold a big part of their land to the church when they were about to start their expedition. This increased the wealth of the Catholic Church tremendously.
The society in the middle ages perceived the church as a place where they can regain their confidence, heal their broken spirits, and restore physical health conditions. The belief of the people that the Popes prayers could help them gain more wealth and good health remarkably strengthened the position of the Popes as leaders and authority on most matters of their lives. This amplified the Church authority over the people even before the start of the Christian Crusades' long history.
Europe's Intellectual Growth - Crusades History
Although the Christian Crusades History expedition and shared knowledge influenced most of the intellectual growth in Europe, other cultures also contributed to its development. Europe became liberalized when it opened its world through trading and travel with other cultures. This enlightened and improved their civilization. The Crusaders experienced different cultures, noted strange lands, and met new people during their expedition. This made them perceive other cultures in a different way. Their understanding about other people's way of living became broader, which made them more patient and flexible with the practices and ways of other cultures. The Crusaders voyages stimulated a group of Latin intellectuals. This led to an intellectual explosion with lots of translations on Arab texts, Roman literature, and classical Greek. This intellectual explosion was popularly known as the period of the Italian Renaissance or the Revival of Learning.
The influence of the other culture in terms of art, geography, and astronomy initiated the intellectual growth of Western Europe. Europe also gained much knowledge from other cultures about sugar refining, math, alcohol refining, and papermaking. Although the Crusaders failed the European armies during the Muslim invasion, the Arabs paid by psychologically suffering from their own warring activities. This seems to be more than the material and human loses that the people and the lands they invaded suffered.
Life before the Christian Crusade - History
The Turks and Mongolian army reigned in the Middle East before the Crusaders came to influence their power. The invasions made the Arabic countries realized to keep and preserve their culture. When Europe was on the process of developing its civilization, the Arabs resisted the change. This resistance put them in a disadvantaged position with the modern times. This problem still existed even today. The Arab still finds it difficult to adapt and accept the concept and benefits of modernization.
The Impact of the Expeditions - History
The influenced of the Crusaders over the people weakened the forces of the Byzantine Empire. Although the noble princes and barons failed to recover Anatolia from the hands of the Turk army, they had successfully defeated the Byzantine power in 1204 along with the fall of Constantinople. The state only serves as a buffer state for the convenience of the Turk army. The Byzantines initiated the idea of putting a buffer to inhibit and protect the empire from the Europeans in 1300. The Turks found their relationship with the Byzantine Empire useful because they serve as the Turks' point of contact for the West. However, when the empire's usefulness was fully exploited and consummated, they overtook the Byzantine Empire in 1453. The most significant contribution of the Crusaders in Europe was the shared culture, knowledge, and trade that they gathered from their various expeditions. Most Europeans who joined the Crusade had either known or seen some of the Crusaders march or gone during the expeditions.
The nation of Palestine became a place that most people go for refuge. The Bible reflected Palestine as a quasi-mythical place. The Crusader set up their forces in the land of the Palestinians and contacted their families in Europe for importing and exporting of goods. The trading system initiated the development of banks and the creation of accounting techniques. This stimulated the trade and commerce between the Mediterranean, East, and Europe. Most of the merchants or intermediaries came from the northern part of Italy if the Crusaders were originally from Germany, France, or England. The Crusaders greatly influenced the economy in the main cities of Europe such as Venice or Genoa. However, the cost of the expeditions, as well as their desires to trade through importation and exportation of goods, weakened the forces of the Crusaders. The need for more funding that could help finance their expeditions and their commercial activities weakened the noble princes and barons but made the merchant classes stronger, which paved way for their independence.
The Christian Crusades' history greatly influenced the development of the cultural institutions during the medieval times. The knights of the Christian Crusades used emblems and many geometric designs as their identity symbols because they cannot read and write. Most of the knights were illiterate and the designs greatly aided their forms of communication and means for identification. The symbols evolved later into coats of arms or heraldic emblems. The romantic literature also developed during the Christian Crusades' history. Most of the skills and knowledge of Europe about masonry and construction of churches and castles with heavy stones came from the Middle East. The transfer of knowledge includes related activities of tunneling, siege, and sapping technologies.
The tunneling technology served to build sappers for warfare. Sappers refer to sap enemy fortifications. The technology was later used for mining. The Churches also used steeples that were inspired by the minarets during the Christian Crusades. The trend of technological development ultimately came from the East and transferred to the West by the Crusaders. This included cultural development. During this time, Europe was not able to give much in return for the technological as well as the cultural development that they gained from the East because their civilization was still underdeveloped. However, the Muslims perceived the expeditions and the activities of the Christian Crusades negatively. The Muslims lost their appreciation and deep regard on the army of Europe that they influenced the Turks to become hostile with the Balkans. The Moslems were known as very conservative when it comes to religion or theology. The Crusaders were flexible enough to tolerate the conservative culture of the Moslems but slowly avoided any confrontations by travelling back to the West. It was then that the Mongols invaded the Moslems.
The Muslims had complete control over their Holy Land before the expedition. The Holy Land, known as Israel, is the core of their monotheistic type of religion. The believers of Islam, Christianity, and the Judaism regarded the Holy Land as a very important place that captured most of the important events of their religion's history. The other name of the Holy Land is Palestine. The Muslims controlled other religious sites before the expedition such as Bethlehem and Nazareth. The strong control over the known religious places happened during the Caliphate of Omar. The Caliph refers to a very strong political but also religious leader in Islam.
Various Expeditions of the Crusaders - History
The biggest and most essential forms of expeditions happened during the 11th until the 13th century. There were nine Crusades recorded by the Crusaders as numbers 1 to 9 under this category. The smaller crusades happened within the European continent such as Austria and Germany, which continued until the Renaissance in the 16th century. The definition and context of the Christian Crusades is holy war of the Christians. The term came from the word cross. The holy war of the Muslims is called Jihad. Members of the Jews, Christians, or Muslims were all firm believers of their respective religions. This strong belief about religion and the differences in some of their teachings made most people unable to understand and accept other people's practices. The differences triggered several holy wars between the members that were sometimes incorporated with political agenda. The missions of the Jihads and Christian Crusades' history resulted to illogical loses in terms of human lives, properties, and economy. The conflict that is happening today between the big religions partly came from the old conflict between the Jihads and the Christian Crusades. The Christian Crusades expeditions expended many lives, which influenced the perceptions of the world.
Cultural and Political Influence of the Christian Crusades - History
The influence of the Christian Crusades on Europe's cultural and political development during the Middle Ages was enormous. Most of Europe were united by the Pope during the 14th century. Centralized bureaucracies also developed and spread throughout Europe during this time, specifically on the nations of Burgundy, France, Spain, England, and Portugal. The Crusaders partly influenced the spread of the centralized bureaucracies through their various expeditions across the continent, which became the modern state's foundation for the government and politics.
The Crusaders transferred knowledge from the Islamic to the West especially medicine, architecture, and science. However, Europe's exposure to the culture of the Islamic was also influenced by their Sicilian and Iberian contacts. The designs of the castles in Europe were also influenced by the Crusaders experiences specifically their military activities. A good model of their military influence was the Caernarfon Castle located in Wales. The fortresses portrayed the styles that Edward I noted during their expedition and fights. The Christian Crusades' history introduced the culture of the Europeans as they traveled across the world especially Asia. The most important achievement of the Christian Crusades' history was the establishment of the traffic from the East to the West. The traffic between the two continents triggered respective developments on their civilizations, economy, art, and politics. The sharing of the trade, technology, and other scientific discoveries were made possible because of the traffic. The sharing of knowledge included the refinement of their engineering methods and equipments, optics, and algebra.
The Polabian Slavs lost many lives during the Northern Christian Crusades. However, they did not totally oppose the colonization of the Germans. However, the German invasions stopped the spread of the Lithuanian state that could possibly organize all of the tribes of the Baltic nations. Lithuania was a small nation pressured and forced by the problems of war with their German Crusaders to expand and look for resources to other probable places like the East. The Germans eventually assimilated the Polabian Slavs except the Sorbs. The initial expedition created a long organized war and violence against the Jewish people in Europe.
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