The Crusades: causes and the first expeditions

The Crusades were military expeditions of western European knights and ordinary people to the Near East between 1096 and 1270, supported by the Catholic Church. Participants were called “crusaders” because they sewed a cross of cloth on their clothes. At the end of the 11th century most of Asia Minor was in the hands of the Seljuk Turks and Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for more than four centuries; roads for Christian pilgrims became more dangerous because of wars among Muslim rulers. The Byzantine emperor asked the pope for help. In 1095 Pope Urban II spoke at a church council at Clermont in France, called on Christians to free Jerusalem and the holy places from the Muslims, and promised participants forgiveness of their sins. The participants’ aims varied: peasants sought escape from a hard life, younger-son knights who would not inherit under primogeniture sought land and glory, merchants sought trading profit and the church sought wider influence. For many, freeing the holy places was a real religious duty.