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The Crusades were also a development of popular religious life and feeling in the West. The social effect of religious belief at the time was complex: religion was moved by tales of signs and wonders, and it attributed natural disasters to supernatural intervention. At the same time, laypersons were not indifferent to reform movements, and on occasion they agitated against clergy whom they regarded as unworthy. A peace movement also developed, especially in France, under the leadership of certain bishops but with considerable popular support. Religious leaders proclaimed the Peace of God and the Truce of God, designed to halt or at least limit warfare and assaults during certain days of the week and times of the year and to protect the lives of clergy, travelers, women, and cattle and others unable to defend themselves against brigandage. It is particularly interesting to note that the Council of Clermont, at which Urban II called for the First Crusade (1095), renewed and generalized the Peace of God.
It may seem paradoxical that a council both promulgated peace and officially sanctioned war, but the peace movement was designed to protect those in distress, and a strong element of the Crusade was the idea of giving aid to fellow Christians in the East. Tied to this idea was the notion that war to defend Christendom was not only a justifiable undertaking but a holy work and therefore pleasing to God.
Closely associated with this Western concept of holy war was another popular religious practice, pilgrimage to a holy shrine. Eleventh-century Europe abounded in local shrines housing relics of saints, but three great centres of pilgrimage stood out above the others: Rome, with the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul; Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain; and Jerusalem, with the Holy Sepulchre of Christ's entombment. Pilgrimage, which had always been considered an act of devotion, had also come to be regarded as a more formal expiation for serious sin, even occasionally prescribed as a penance for the sinner by his confessor.
Yet another element in the popular religious consciousness of the 11th century, one associated with both Crusade and pilgrimage, was the belief that the end of the world was imminent. Some scholars have discovered evidence of apocalyptic expectations around the years 1000 and 1033 (the millennium of the birth and Passion of Jesus, respectively), and others have emphasized the continuance of the idea throughout the 11th century and beyond. Moreover, in certain late 11th-century portrayals of the end of all things, the “last emperor,” now popularly identified with the “king of the Franks,” the final successor of Charlemagne, was to lead the faithful to Jerusalem to await the Second Coming of Christ. Jerusalem, as the earthly symbol of the heavenly city, figured prominently in Western consciousness, and, as the number of pilgrimages to Jerusalem increased in the 11th century, it became clear that any interruption of access to the city would have serious repercussions.
By the middle of the 11th century, the Seljuq Turks had wrested political authority from the ʿAbbāsid caliphs of Baghdad. Seljuq policy, originally directed southward against the Fāṭimids of Egypt, was increasingly diverted by the pressure of Turkmen raids into Anatolia and Byzantine Armenia. A Byzantine army was defeated and Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was captured at Manzikert in 1071, and Christian Asia Minor was thereby opened to eventual Turkish occupation. Meanwhile, many Armenians south of the Caucasus migrated south to join others in the region of the Taurus Mountains and to form a colony in Cilicia.
Seljuq expansion southward continued, and in 1085 the capture of Antioch in Syria, one of the patriarchal sees of Christianity, was another blow to Byzantine prestige. Thus, although the Seljuq empire never successfully held together as a unit, it appropriated most of Asia Minor, including Nicaea, from the Byzantine Empire and brought a resurgent Islam perilously close to Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. It was this danger that prompted the emperor, Alexius Comnenus, to seek aid from the West, and by 1095 the West was ready to respond.
The turmoil of these years disrupted normal political life and made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult and often impossible. Stories of dangers and molestation reached the West and remained in the popular mind even after conditions improved. Furthermore, informed authorities began to realize that the power of the Muslim world now seriously menaced the West as well as the East. It was this realization that led to the Crusades.
Alexius's appeal came at a time when relations between the Eastern and Western branches of the Christian world were improving. Difficulties between the two in the middle years of the century had resulted in a de facto, though not formally proclaimed, schism in 1054, and ecclesiastical disagreements had been accentuated by Norman occupation of formerly Byzantine areas in southern Italy. A campaign led by the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard against the Greek mainland further embittered the Byzantines, and it was only after Robert's death in 1085 that conditions for a renewal of normal relations between East and West were reasonably favourable. Envoys of Emperor Alexius Comnenus thus arrived at the Council of Piacenza in 1095 at a propitious moment, and it seems probable that Pope Urban II viewed military aid as a means toward restoring ecclesiastical unity.
It may seem paradoxical that a council both promulgated peace and officially sanctioned war, but the peace movement was designed to protect those in distress, and a strong element of the Crusade was the idea of giving aid to fellow Christians in the East. Tied to this idea was the notion that war to defend Christendom was not only a justifiable undertaking but a holy work and therefore pleasing to God.
Closely associated with this Western concept of holy war was another popular religious practice, pilgrimage to a holy shrine. Eleventh-century Europe abounded in local shrines housing relics of saints, but three great centres of pilgrimage stood out above the others: Rome, with the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul; Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain; and Jerusalem, with the Holy Sepulchre of Christ's entombment. Pilgrimage, which had always been considered an act of devotion, had also come to be regarded as a more formal expiation for serious sin, even occasionally prescribed as a penance for the sinner by his confessor.
Yet another element in the popular religious consciousness of the 11th century, one associated with both Crusade and pilgrimage, was the belief that the end of the world was imminent. Some scholars have discovered evidence of apocalyptic expectations around the years 1000 and 1033 (the millennium of the birth and Passion of Jesus, respectively), and others have emphasized the continuance of the idea throughout the 11th century and beyond. Moreover, in certain late 11th-century portrayals of the end of all things, the “last emperor,” now popularly identified with the “king of the Franks,” the final successor of Charlemagne, was to lead the faithful to Jerusalem to await the Second Coming of Christ. Jerusalem, as the earthly symbol of the heavenly city, figured prominently in Western consciousness, and, as the number of pilgrimages to Jerusalem increased in the 11th century, it became clear that any interruption of access to the city would have serious repercussions.
By the middle of the 11th century, the Seljuq Turks had wrested political authority from the ʿAbbāsid caliphs of Baghdad. Seljuq policy, originally directed southward against the Fāṭimids of Egypt, was increasingly diverted by the pressure of Turkmen raids into Anatolia and Byzantine Armenia. A Byzantine army was defeated and Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was captured at Manzikert in 1071, and Christian Asia Minor was thereby opened to eventual Turkish occupation. Meanwhile, many Armenians south of the Caucasus migrated south to join others in the region of the Taurus Mountains and to form a colony in Cilicia.
Seljuq expansion southward continued, and in 1085 the capture of Antioch in Syria, one of the patriarchal sees of Christianity, was another blow to Byzantine prestige. Thus, although the Seljuq empire never successfully held together as a unit, it appropriated most of Asia Minor, including Nicaea, from the Byzantine Empire and brought a resurgent Islam perilously close to Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. It was this danger that prompted the emperor, Alexius Comnenus, to seek aid from the West, and by 1095 the West was ready to respond.
The turmoil of these years disrupted normal political life and made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult and often impossible. Stories of dangers and molestation reached the West and remained in the popular mind even after conditions improved. Furthermore, informed authorities began to realize that the power of the Muslim world now seriously menaced the West as well as the East. It was this realization that led to the Crusades.
Alexius's appeal came at a time when relations between the Eastern and Western branches of the Christian world were improving. Difficulties between the two in the middle years of the century had resulted in a de facto, though not formally proclaimed, schism in 1054, and ecclesiastical disagreements had been accentuated by Norman occupation of formerly Byzantine areas in southern Italy. A campaign led by the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard against the Greek mainland further embittered the Byzantines, and it was only after Robert's death in 1085 that conditions for a renewal of normal relations between East and West were reasonably favourable. Envoys of Emperor Alexius Comnenus thus arrived at the Council of Piacenza in 1095 at a propitious moment, and it seems probable that Pope Urban II viewed military aid as a means toward restoring ecclesiastical unity.