| >That is a little ironic considering the first crusade was initiated by the Emperor in the east to recapture Jerusalem and the middle east. I don't think this is quite right. The sequence of events is roughly as follows: 1054: Great Schism, Patriarchate of Constantinople diverges from Papacy in Rome. 1071: Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk (Turkish) Empire conquers most of Anatolia [also 1071: Norman invasion of southern Italy and Sicily, final de facto eviction of Byzantines from Italy] 1095: First Crusade, Frankish armies storm the Levant and capture Nicaea and Jerusalem -- also the only Crusade that had any real success, others at most reversed previous losses. It seems more than a little suspicious that all of this happens so quickly. It can't just be about Jerusalem, which had fallen to the Muslim conquests four centuries prior. Rather, after the Schism, there is a "switch" from formal (but usually ignored) ERE suzerainty over European kingdoms, with European military assistance under the banner of ERE armies, to European armies fighting as "equal partners" of the ERE. This second arrangement worked well at first, but it was less stable and less successful in the long run, ultimately leading to the disastrous Fourth Crusade and the Fall of Acre. In fact, the ERE/Byzantines had already been making gains against the Arabs in the Levant up until the Schism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Antioch_(968%E2%80%93... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Byzantine_wars#By... |
I find it somewhat hard understand, how the church managed to mobilise europe into a crusade, it is possible that the various competing establishments weren't very enthusiastic about the project, to begin with.