Why Did Pope Urban II Encourage The Crusades?

Historian Arnold J. Toynbee said, “Sooner of later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.” In regards to the Crusades, Pope Urban II chose to worship his own power – yet he got thousands of Europeans to worship the power of God. The Crusades were a series of campaigns in which Europeans tried to take the Holy Land from Muslims. Pope Urban II headed the First Crusade, which lasted from 1096 to 1099, after he received a request for military aid from Alexios I. Alexios I was the Byzantine ruler, and his empire was facing attacks from the Seljuk Turks. The Crusades soon overtook all aspects of European society as the promise of salvation and wealth was too great to pass up. While some may argue that

Pope Urban II, just like many popes before him, was a part of the Investiture Controversy, which stemmed from a dispute between King Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII. For the duration of the 11th and 12th centuries, religious leaders like Urban faced conflict with the ruling class of Europe, and this sense of contention impacted and fueled many of Urban’s decisions, including the choice he made to so strongly encourage the Crusades. Due to the fact that there were “political forces at work… since the Crusades were also tied to the Investiture Controversy” and because Urban attempted to and succeeded at “usurp[ing] the prerogative most secular rulers had claimed traditionally to declare an enemy and muster troops for battle,” it is undeniable that he was caught up in – and winning – a political battle, which means that he must have been acting with politics in the forefront of his mind (Crawford). Furthermore, Pope Urban II used the crusades as a way of undermining the king's authority while simultaneously increasing his own – now he was the one who was calling the shots and sending the European people off to war, when usually, that job belonged to the king. While this may seem insignificant, the pope knew that if the king could not even control his own people, he would have

During Europe in the Middle Ages, people’s lives were generally filled with poverty, the imminent possibility of death, and overall feelings of hopelessness. This translated into widespread violence and chaos, which Pope Urban II was understandably very concerned about. Thankfully, he had a solution in mind: he believed that “such energy could be focused on fighting against the Muslims in the Holy Land” and sure enough, “Soon knights and soldiers left their petty quarrels and traveled to the east to fight against the infidel,” going to prove that not only was the Pope politically driven – he was also politically adept (Runciman). Pope Urban II saw that the Europeans were a greatly divided and combative people, and he thought that the Crusades would be an effective remedy for this. Just as he had predicted, the European people, when given an alternate outlet for their everyday feelings of anger and fear besides each other, were able to truly unite. All things considered, it is evident that the Pope set the Crusades in motion more so to bring his country's people together than to fulfill any religious or economic agenda. After all, it is every leader’s responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of his or her people before pursuing outside opportunities, and Pope Urban II was no