Crusades

The Crusades

Though the causes of the crusades can easily be distinguished the one cause can not be effectively since there is always something that will contradict it. The crusades took place because of the rivalry as well as the clash of cultures between the Catholic Church and the Muslims, they both wanted power, the crusaders wanted more land, and more wealth and both parties wanted to be closer to the Armageddon.

It can easily be determined that there was a rivalry between the Catholics and the Muslims. Reading the view of each other in the 11 century shows that they really didn't get together well. There are many reasons for this understatement. First their religions were essentially the same thing, though the Muslim point of view stated that Mohammed was the chosen one. Even though Christ was a man of God the Muslim point of view didn't accept him as the chosen one. The Christians point of view was that of the opposite they don't even believe that Mohammed had the word of God and that it was Christ, the true saviour. First hand documents of the Muslims and the Catholics have very biased points of view and are very hard to understand what really happened. The Muslims claimed to be healers with the more accurate way of living with practising science and maths, their view of the Christians was people who live to far north the cold shrinks their brains resulting in poor eating habits needs as well as a lack of intelligence causing ignorance and stupidity. The Christians also viewed the Muslims with a certain bias such as they had viewed the Muslims as money hungry cannibals, mention was made that the Muslims would rip open their heels and rip out their intestines for money both very disgusting habits. Since they were fighting each other and killing each other maybe the way of attacking beliefs and cultural background is a way to minimise the way they look at each other so when in battle your not as hesitant to kill each other. However this could be a 20th century view instead of the 11th century belief systems.

Both the crusaders and the Muslims wanted power. In an interesting contradiction the church wanted to reunite Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire with the Roman Catholic Empire giving the church more power. Then there could be that the pope really wanted the Holy Land back. Though there is really no hard evidence saying that this was the case it is felt that they really wanted more land, expanding into the broken off Byzantine Empire. This taken from Pope Urban's speech about how people raised spears against each other instead let's join and battle against the real enemies, the Turks. This really doesn't mean anything at first glance, but the mention of raising spears against ourselves instead let's ban together and destroy the enemy. This would imply let's have the two empires form one and battle the Turks and then we can get the Holy Land back as well as have more land which equals more power. Another interesting point is from the crusaders themselves. They stated that if they had gone and conquered the Holy Land they would receive land and money this all ties in with power, since at the present time all they had was the Feudal system meaning they would govern their own system.

The crusaders wanted