First Crusade

Examples of First Crusade in the following topics:

• The First Crusade

  • The First Crusade (1095–1099) was a military expedition by Roman Catholic Europe to regain the Holy Lands taken in Muslim conquests, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem.
  • The First Crusade (1095–1099), called for by Pope Urban II, was the first of a number of crusades intended to recapture the Holy Lands.
  • During the crusade, knights, peasants, and serfs from many regions of Western Europe travelled over land and by sea, first to Constantinople and then on toward Jerusalem.
  • The Crusader armies crossed over into Asia Minor during the first half of 1097, where they were joined by Peter the Hermit and the remainder of his little army.
  • The first object of their campaign was Nicaea, previously a city under Byzantine rule, but which had become the capital of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum under Kilij Arslan I.

• The Second Crusade

  • The Second Crusade (1147–1149) was the second major crusade launched against Islam by Catholic Europe, started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa founded in the First Crusade; it was largely a failure for the Europeans.
  • The county had been founded during the First Crusade by King Baldwin of Boulogne in 1098.
  • While it was the first Crusader state to be founded, it was also the first to fall.
  • The Second Crusade was announced by Pope Eugene III, and was the first of the crusades to be led by European kings, namely Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, who had help from a number of other European nobles.
  • Many of the French nobles distrusted the land route, which would take them through the Byzantine Empire, the reputation of which still suffered from the accounts of the First Crusaders.

• The Fourth Crusade

  • The First Crusade arose after a call to arms in 1095 sermons by Pope Urban II.
  • As a result of the First Crusade, four primary Crusader states were created: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, and the County of Tripoli.
  • On a popular level, the First Crusade unleashed a wave of impassioned, pious Catholic fury, which was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the Crusades and the violent treatment of the "schismatic" Orthodox Christians of the east.
  • On June 23, 1203, the main Crusader fleet reached Constantinople.
  • After the failure of the Fourth Crusade to hold Constantinople or reach Jerusalem, Innocent III launched the first crusade against heretics, the Albigensian Crusade, against the Cathars in France and the County of Toulouse.

• The Third Crusade

  • At the time of the First Crusade, the Middle East was severely divided by warring rulers.
  • The Siege of Acre was one of the first confrontations of the Third Crusade, and a key victory for the Crusaders but a serious defeat for Saladin, who had hoped to destroy the whole of the Crusader kingdom.
  • The motivations and results of the Third Crusade differed from those of the First in several ways.
  • In addition, unlike the First Crusade, in the Second and Third Crusades kings led Crusaders into battle.
  • The Siege of Acre was the first major confrontation of the Third Crusade.

• The Crusades

  • The origin of the Crusades in general, and particularly of the First Crusade, is widely debated among historians.
  • The confusion is partially due to the numerous armies in the First Crusade, and their lack of direct unity.
  • Historians have argued that the desire to impose Roman church authority in the east may have been one of the goals of the Crusades, although Urban II, who launched the First Crusade, never refers to such a goal in his letters on crusading.
  • While the Crusades had causes deeply rooted in the social and political situations of 11th-century Europe, the event actually triggering the First Crusade was a request for assistance from Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos.
  • Combining the idea of pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war against infidels, Urban received an enthusiastic response to his speeches and soon after began collecting military forces to begin the First Crusade.

• Crisis and Fragmentation

  • But for the first time, the Byzantines would have to look west for help, to their estranged fellow Christians in Western Europe.
  • To the Byzantines the crusaders were dirty, uneducated brutes.
  • The Byzantines and crusaders agreed that whatever formerly Byzantine lands the crusaders recaptured from the Turks would be returned to Byzantine control.
  • The crusaders parceled out Byzantine lands among themselves.
  • The capture of Jerusalem in 1099 CE marked the success of Western Europe's First Crusade against the Muslims.

• The Romanesque Period

  • Romanesque art was affected by shifting political powers following the Carolingian period, and the mobility of peoples during the Crusades.
  • Romanesque architecture was the first distinctive style to spread across Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
  • The domed churches of Constantinople and Eastern Europe were to greatly affect the architecture of certain towns, particularly through trade and through the Crusades.
  • The result of this was that they could be called upon, not only for local spats, but to follow their lord to travel across Europe to the Crusades.
  • The Crusades, 1095–1270, brought about a very large movement of people, and with them ideas and trade skills, particularly those involved in the building of fortifications and the metal working needed for the provision of arms, which was also applied to the fitting and decoration of buildings .

• Timeline

  • 2494 - 2345 BCE: The first of the oldest surviving religious texts, the Pyramid Texts, are composed in Ancient Egypt.
  • 325 CE: The first Ecumenical Council, the Council of Nicaea, is convened to attain a consensus on doctrine through an assembly representing all of Christendom.
  • 405 CE: Saint Jerome completes the Vulgate, the first Latin translation of the Bible.
  • 1204: Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade sack the Christian Eastern Orthodox city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire.

• Italian Trade Cities

  • The Crusades had built lasting trade links to the Levant, and the Fourth Crusade had done much to destroy the Byzantine Roman Empire as a commercial rival to the Venetians and Genoese.
  • The trade routes of the Italian states linked with those of established Mediterranean ports and eventually the Hanseatic League of the Baltic and northern regions of Europe to create a network economy in Europe for the first time since the 4th century.
  • Italy first felt the changes in Europe from the 11th to the 13th centuries.
  • The recovery of lost Greek texts, which had been preserved by Arab scholars, following the Crusader conquest of the Byzantine heartlands, revitalized medieval philosophy in the Renaissance of the 12th century.

• Late Byzantine Art

  • During the Fourth Crusades, the Crusaders attacked Constantinople, took the city under siege in 1203, and eventually overcame the defenses to sack the city in 1204.
  • The settings are often simple, perhaps a hill or a chair at first, and are often pastoral.
  • At first buildings were rendered slightly skewed, but eventually artists refined the combination of material (mosaic and painting) with architecture and perspective .
  • The division of the Byzantine Empire after its sacking in 1204 by French and Italian armies during the Fourth Crusades