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Home >> The
Crusades
The Crusades ~ Two
centuries of Holy Wars |
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1095 - 1096 People's
Crusade
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1096 - 1099
First Crusade
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1147 - 1149
Second Crusade
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1189 - 1192
Third Crusade
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1202 - 1204
Fourth Crusade
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1202 - 1202 Children's
Crusade
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1218 - 1221 Fifth
Crusade
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1228 - 1229 Sixth
Crusade
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1248 - 1254 Seventh
Crusade
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1270 - 1272
Eighth Crusade
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1291
End of the Crusades
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From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a
horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our
ears: namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed
race, a race utterly alienated from God, a generation, forsooth, which
has neither directed its heart nor entrusted its spirit to God, has
invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by sword,
pillage, and fire. . . . |
---Pope Urban II, Proclamation
at Clermont, 1095 |
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Western Europe's most ambitious common enterprise and its most
conspicuous failure was the attempt to bring together all mankind in
Christian unity under the leadership of the bishop of Rome, St. Peter's
successor, the pope. The most intense part of this enterprise and the
one that enlisted the most widespread support in Europe from all levels
of society was the Crusades.
The Crusades, in the narrow sense of the expeditions to conquer and hold
the Holy Land for the West, began at the end of the eleventh century and
lasted throughout the remainder of the medieval period. In a more
inclusive sense, the Crusades include several other important
contributing factors:
The Crusades inspired the most dedicated valor, the most bloodthirsty
cruelty, and the greediest vandalism of medieval men. They offered the
fullest opportunity for combined fulfillment of Germanic heroic
aspirations and Christian ideals of brotherhood and self-sacrifice.
 
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