Crusades: Salvation or Exploitation
The phrase Crusade is a French word that means lifting the cross. The phrase is mainly used for describing the campaigns or the military battle that was waged against the Muslims by the early Christians. The Muslims controlled Israel, Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon and had waged war crimes against Christians. These areas were named the holy land. The Crusades were carried out as a response to the vandalism of the Christian shrines, destruction of churches and persecution of Christians in Holy Land. The paper shall show that the Crusades were a form of Salvation for the Christians.
A Crusade was thought to be legitimate and had to meet a specific criteria. A person never entered into the Crusade for just self-aggrandizement
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Notwithstanding the numerous potential motivators, enough evidences exist to show that the core motivation to the call of crusading was their quest for salvation that was expressed as remission and forgiveness by the church and provided as an indulgence. It is indicated that Pope allowed the passage of peasants into Europe so that they may play a role in the Crusade with the sole objective of conquering and reclaiming the new territories. Conversely, Christians asserted that the Crusades were part of controlling the Holy land after the Muslims had waged war and control over the lands earlier occupied by Muslims.
References
Adam Knobler, "Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: the Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades." Comparative Studies in Society and History 2006 48(2): 293-325
Madden, Thomas F, and Thomas F. Madden. The New Concise History of the Crusades. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2007. Print. Phillips, Jonathan. “Who Were the First Crusaders?” History Today 47, no. 3 (1997): 16.
Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam. Columbia University Press. Web 10th April 2015.
Tyerman, Christopher. God 's War: A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.