Consequences and Associations of the Crusades

Almost exactly two centuries after the fall of Acre, the last Christian stronghold in the East, in 1291—an event that signaled the end of the Crusades—three important events took place in Spain. These events in 1492 could be said to mark the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. That year, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella finally drove Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) after defeating them at their last stronghold, the city of Granada. Also that year, Christopher Columbus began his voyage in search of a westward route to Asia. His voyage launched an age of discovery and exploration that transformed the world, although that transformation had already begun at the time of the Crusades. Finally, Spain offered its Jews an ultimatum: become Christian or leave the country. While many converted under pressure, many others left, and these exiles once again began a search for a homeland. Each of these events reflected long-term outcomes of the Crusades.

Ferdinand and Isabella drive the Muslims out of Granada

From a military standpoint, the Crusades were an utter failure, at least after 1099. What began with high idealism and religious zeal (enthusiasm) quickly turned into a scramble for money and power. The European Crusaders were often brave, but they were just as often vicious, cruel, and stupid. The Fourth Crusade, which ended with the sacking of Constantinople, destroyed the Byzantine Empire and opened the door for the Muslim Turks to expand farther westward. Not only did the Crusades fail in their purpose, but from Europe's point of view they also made matters worse.

From another perspective, though, the Crusades were successful at least in stemming the Islamic invasion of Europe. After the founding of Islam in the seventh century, it spread throughout the Mediterranean region (see "The Spread of Islam" in Chapter 1). Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, parts of southern Italy, North Africa, and much of Spain fell to Muslim invaders. From Spain, Muslims launched an invasion of France in the eighth century, though that invasion was beaten back. In the early 1000s Muslims advanced on Rome, but with similar results. During the Crusades and after, Spain reclaimed its territory in what was called the Reconquista (see "Spanish Islam" in Chapter 1), which ended when the Spanish monarchy raised its flag over Granada in 1492. Historians can only speculate, but it seems likely that without the Crusades, Islam would have made further inroads into Europe.

One important outcome of the Crusades is that they diminished the power of the popes and increased the power of Europe's monarchs. It was King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, not a pope, who drove the Muslims out of Spain (and who financed Columbus's expedition). After the Roman Empire broke apart in the fifth century, western Europe was in a state of chaos. Bandits and warlike tribes overran much of the continent. No one seemed to have the power to drive them away. Feudalism emerged as a social and economic structure that provided people some measure of protection against violence and invasion (see "The Structure of Medieval Society" in Chapter 9).

Feudalism also had the effect of breaking Europe into small, competing principalities (the territories of princes), duchies (the territories of dukes), and feudal estates. While a king, in theory, ruled over a kingdom such as France or England, real power was in the hands of dukes, counts, and barons who ruled regions of the country. In turn, these regions were divided into smaller landholdings governed by the nobles' vassals, that is, those men who had sworn oaths of loyalty to the nobles in exchange for protection; these men, in turn, frequently made grants of land to knights. This structure is reflected in the names of many of the important Crusaders: Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh of Vermandois, Raymond of Toulouse. These men were not "French." Rather, they identified themselves with a region of France or even a city.

This patchwork of small regions created a power vacuum that was filled by the Catholic Church and the pope. The concept of Christendom imposed some sort of common purpose over the fragmented states of Europe. Many popes, seeing themselves as Europe's true "kings," wanted to expand their authority. Urban II, for example, called the First Crusade in 1095 in large part to extend the power of the Catholic Church, perhaps even to force the Eastern Orthodox Church, another branch of Christianity in the East, to submit to him (see "Religious Separation of East and West" in Chapter 1). Pope Innocent III, who called the Fourth Crusade in 1199, believed that the pope was the supreme monarch on earth, not just of the church, but of the state as well. He became obsessed with recapturing Jerusalem not because Jerusalem was the site of Christ's tomb, but mainly because it was not part of his worldly "empire."

The failure of the later Crusades to recapture Jerusalem began to break the backs of the popes. After the First Crusade, kings were leading the Crusades: Louis VII of France (Second Crusade), Richard I of England and Philip II of France (Third Crusade), Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (Sixth Crusade), and Louis IX of France (Seventh Crusade). In effect, Europe's kings were competing with the pope for power. The best example is the Sixth Crusade, which Frederick II—who defied the authority of the pope—conducted without authorization from Rome. The pope, Gregory VII, was so determined to hold back the ambitious Frederick that he made preparations to invade Frederick's realms in Italy while the emperor was on this Crusade. Ten years later Gregory called a Crusade not against "the infidels" (unbelievers, referring to Muslims), but against Frederick, one of Europe's Christian kings. Frederick fought back and ignored the pope when he excommunicated, or expelled, Frederick from the church.

As Europe's kings were beginning to assert themselves, that is, to claim power and authority, the Crusades were transforming the feudal makeup of Europe. So many of the old feudal lords had either died in the Crusades or transplanted themselves and their families to Palestine and Syria that power began to shift upward toward the king. Now, people were not just citizens of, say, Aquitaine or Toulouse. They were beginning to think of themselves as French. Similar changes took place in England, Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire.

In time, this shift of power from the pope to temporal (worldly) rulers would allow more democratic forms of government to emerge. Even during the Crusades, this process began to take place in England with the Magna Carta, or "Great Charter." The Magna Carta does not make very interesting reading in the twenty-first century, however. It consists of sixty-three demands the nobles of England made of King John I in 1215. They all had to do with such issues as taxes and inheritance laws. The point of the Magna Carta is that it exists, that the English barons made and won their demands. It was the first step toward a more constitutional form of government. Power was flowing from the pope and the church to civil rulers, such as kings and queens. From there it was beginning to flow downward to the people, although this process would take centuries more to complete.

Columbus launches his voyage to the New World

Columbus's goal in sailing to the Far East in part was to establish a base from which Christians could launch a new Crusade to the Middle East. In his journal, dated December 26, 1492, he said that he wanted all the profits from his voyage to be used to finance the conquest of Jerusalem. In his will, he created a fund that he directed to be used for a Crusade.

While Columbus's dream was never realized, his voyages marked the beginning of a new Europe, one that was very different from the Europe of 1095 when Pope Urban II had called the First Crusade. Many of the changes in Europe resulted from the Crusades. At the beginning of the Crusades, Europe was almost barbaric. The major European cities—London, Paris, and Rome—were backward places compared with cities in the East. There, civilization flourished, not only in the Byzantine Empire (the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church) but also in such great cities as Thebes, Memphis, Nineveh, Tyre, Sidon, Damascus, Baghdad, and Jerusalem. In these cities, learning was far more advanced than it was in Europe. They were home to libraries (Damascus alone had seventy libraries) and museums; to advances in medicine and science; to astronomers, mathematicians, skilled crafts workers, and engineers.

Crusaders returned to Europe with new ideas, new foods, and even new words. Alchemy, alcohol, alcove, algebra, algorithm, alkali, amalgam, and arsenal are just some of the "a" words that came from the Middle East. Other borrowings, both of concepts and words, include bazaar, benzene, borax, camphor, cipher, elixir, sequin, soda, talisman, tariff, zenith, and many more from the work of Arab scientists, geographers, poets, and astronomers.

Without the advances in astronomy that came from Arabia, for example, Columbus—as well as numerous other explorers from Spain, Portugal, and Italy—would have lacked the navigational tools needed to make his voyage. The astrolabe, for instance, was a device used for navigation and timekeeping at sea by plotting the positions of the sun and stars (whose names Europe also adopted from the Arabs). The astrolabe was widely used in the Islamic world by 800 and was introduced to Europe by Muslims in Spain early in the twelfth century. Columbus also would have used a navigational tool called a quadrant, which measured altitude and was developed from the Arabs' kamal.

The list of products that Europe acquired from the Middle East seems almost endless. There were fruits—such as limes, lemons, apricots, and oranges—and spices, such as nutmeg, cinnamon, caraway, tarragon, and saffron. Fabrics included damask, satin, silk, and mohair, as well as exotic oriental carpets and the dyes used to color these fabrics. The Crusades led to increased European demand for fine silver and gold jewelry, articles made of precious stones, glassware, and tools made of hard Damascus steel, all from the Middle East and other parts of the world. Among the musical instruments taken back to Europe were the shawm (a woodwind instrument), the lute, and various kinds of drums.

Meanwhile, the Crusades encouraged other important changes in Europe. New roads were built to accommodate pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Warfare, as it always does, introduced new forms of technology, including more effective weapons, and new architectural techniques learned from building better castles. Novel ways of paying for the ventures led to the development of trade, commerce, shipbuilding, finance, and credit around the Mediterranean. New forms of taxation to fund the later Crusades led to the development of more modern systems for collecting and distributing revenues for public ventures. It also became easier for Europe to keep track of this money. In about 1202 Europe abandoned Roman numerals in favor of what are still called Arabic numerals.

The key point is that westerners were becoming more aware of the wider world. They translated numerous Arabic texts, including medical, mathematical, and scientific books and books on such fields as optics and magnetism. They established universities that were starting to put this knowledge to use, much of it collected by western scholars who had traveled to the East to study. To better understand Islam (usually, though, with the goal of converting Muslims to Christianity), clerics (clergymen) translated Arabic philosophical texts, and Abbot Peter the Venerable even translated the Koran, the Muslim holy book. Schools were set up in Europe to teach eastern languages, and many missionaries traveled throughout the Middle East and Far East trying to win converts. They returned to Europe with geographical knowledge that expanded the world for Europeans. Europe was emerging from its Dark Ages and from under the thumb of the pope, and many of the fruits of the Crusades created a climate of exploration and curiosity that enabled Columbus and others to gain funding for their voyages.

The Jews are expelled from Spain

The Crusades drove a permanent wedge between Islam and the West. For centuries after Jerusalem fell to the Muslims in 638, Muslims and Christians lived side by side in relative harmony. Some historians believe that during the centuries between 638 and the First Crusade, more Christians than Muslims lived in the Middle East. Numerous Christian sects, or subgroups, flourished, including groups with such names as the Jacobites in Syria, the Copts in Egypt, and the Nestorians of Persia. Each of these groups had its own history, its own interpretation of the Christian message, its own churches, and its own vital community. Many of these Christians held high offices alongside Muslims.

The Crusades, of course, changed that. After Acre fell, Christians in the Middle East began to retreat. Many were fearful of the victorious Muslims and converted to Islam. The Mongols who invaded the region in the thirteenth century came to believe that Allah, the God of Islam, was the true God, so they, too, converted to Islam. Put simply, Islam won the Crusades, at least from one perspective. They drove out the Christians, converted the Mongols, and turned the Byzantine Empire into the Muslim Ottoman Empire, which survived in Asia Minor and surrounding regions until the twentieth century.

In the view of many historians, the Crusades have still not ended. They point out that the same tensions persist in the Middle East that existed a thousand years ago. Palestine became part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, but in the peace that was declared after World War I (1914–18), it came under British control. Finally, in 1948, the Jewish nation of Israel was formed out of Palestine. The Jews, after having been driven out of so many places, from Old Testament times until 1492 Spain and beyond, now had a homeland that included the city of the Temple of Solomon, Jerusalem (see "Judaism" in Chapter 1).

A glance at the headlines of any current newspaper on any given day shows that peace still has not come to this troubled region. Jewish Israel is surrounded by Muslim nations that see Israel as hostile occupiers of their holy land. Israel relies heavily on military aid from its chief ally, the United States, which has a long-standing cultural connection with the Jews. The first settlers in America were the Pilgrims, a reminder of the pilgrimages to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages (roughly 500–1500). The first Pilgrims gave many of their towns Old Testament names, such as Hebron, Salem, Bethlehem, Zion, and Judea. Despite some anti-Semitism (anti-Jewish prejudice), many Jews have found a home in the United States and live in relative peace.

In contrast, Jews in Israel feel as though they are under a constant state of siege against the Arab Muslim nations that surround the country, as do Muslim Palestinians in territories occupied by the Israelis. The result is constant violence and terrorism. The focus of much of the violence is the United States, which is often seen in the Middle East as a new Crusader force, ignorant of Islam and deeply prejudiced against Muslims. To some observers, it was unfortunate that President George W. Bush used the word crusade in discussing the war against terrorism after the September 11, 2001, attacks on America. Such a word could suggest to the Muslim world a repeat of historical events now nearly a millennium old. The president's supporters, however, noted that the "crusade" was against terrorism, not Islam.

Meanwhile, the crushed remains of Crusader castles dot the landscape in Palestine. And as Franklin Hamilton notes in his book The Crusades: "History may never repeat itself, but certain patterns seem eternal, and the struggle for that sun-parched scrap of earth known as the Holy Land is still going on, in the atomic age as in the days of mounted knights."