Barren County Middle School iLearn@Home
7th Grade Social Studies
Day 2
Choose one of the options below to complete as your classwork for this snow day.
Option 1:
1. Log in to Barren County Schools
website and click on Barren County
Middle School.
2. Go to Teacher websites. Click on my
name.
3. On my page, click the iLearn@Home
link or my google classroom link.
4. In google classroom, locate
iLearn@Home day 2 and complete.
5. Be sure to use the graphic organizer at
the end of this packet to summarize
the articles.
Option 2:
1. Read the attached articles.
2. Summarize the articles using the Who,
What, Where graphic organizer at the
end of the packet.
Contact information should you need extra help. If your teacher does not reply or is not available,
please email on of the other teachers.
delenia.alls@barren.kyschools.us
nicholas.pace@barren.kyschools.us
jennifer.toms@barren.kyschools.us
The when, where and who (of crusading)
Setting a timeline
In some ways, setting a beginning date for the crusading movement is relatively easy. The First
Crusade was preached by Pope Urban II in 1095. Several different expeditions responded to this
appeal, but the general dates for the First Crusade are 1096-1099, when the city of Jerusalem was
conquered. Keep in mind though that crusading didn’t emerge from a vacuum, and many of the
elements of crusading were circulating before 1095.
However, finding an end date for the crusades is quite difficult indeed. Scholars used to stress that the heyday of
crusading was before 1300. But we now know that crusading continued to flourish—as an ideal even when not
in practice—for many centuries after that. Some place the end date at 1571, when the rising Ottoman Empire
defeated the Kingdom of Cyprus at the city of Famagusta. Others place it in the late nineteenth century, when
the last attempt at a military order (i.e., a Catholic armed religious order, like the medieval Knights Templar)
ended. The argument can be made—and is in fact made by some groups around the world—that the crusades
never ended at all.
Theaters and targets
The First Crusade was launched at the Levant (the region
at the end of the eastern Mediterranean) with the stated
purpose of rescuing Christians and bringing the Christian
holy places—specifically Jerusalem—back into (European)
Christian hands.
Of all the crusades to the region, the First was the most
successful (from the perspective of European participants),
and led to the creation of small polities in the Levant,
known as the crusader states. European nobles first
governed these small states, which were inhabited by
some settlers from western Europe as well as native
Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
By the time the Second Crusade rolled around (11461149) crusading had already expanded dramatically. The
Second Crusade took place on three fronts: against
Muslims in the Levant, against pagans in northern Europe,
and against Muslims on the Iberian peninsula (modern day
Spain and Portugal). This does not mean that all three
fronts were coordinated, as in a modern war. Rather, it means that contemporaries believed that the
wars on all three fronts together constituted a larger endeavor.
We should also remember that the Levant and Iberia contained any number of local Christians, Jews,
and other religious groups, and they were not always exempted from crusader violence, even though
it was held to be wrong to persecute or kill fellow Christians and Jews.
After the Second Crusade, crusading continued to expand and evolve. Muslims (or areas under Muslim
governance) continued to be targets, especially when they threatened or reconquered portions of the crusader
states, but other targets included Christian “heretics” (for example, in southern France), the Christian Byzantine
Empire, and political opponents of the papacy within Europe.
Crusading also developed local traditions. In northern Europe, crusading became a festive seasonal rite of
passage for western European knights, complete with honorary feasts and prizes. In other places, crusading
interacted with pre-existing factors, for example in Iberia, where both ideas of crusading and of the
“Reconquest” were influential. In still other places, again in northern Europe but also Malta, the military
orders—armed religious orders (most famously the Knights Templar)—set up independent, or virtually
independent states dedicated to perpetual crusading.
Participants
A departing or returning crusader being embraced by his wife, from the Belval Priory, Lorraine, late 12th
century (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy)
Who went on crusade? From the beginning, popes and other leaders sought to
encourage only professional men of war, whether kings, lords, knights, or simple
men-at-arms, to go on crusade. And from the beginning, individuals of almost
every other social class, age, and gender ignored this and wanted to go, too. The
only people explicitly forbidden from going on crusade were those who had taken
religious vows (like priests and monks), and even then, many tried to find a way
to go—and, indeed, many went.
This doesn’t mean that everyone in Europe was pulled inexorably into crusading
like water down a drain. Crusading was expensive, and it was very risky. To go
on crusade meant leaving your loved ones and your property (if you had any)
vulnerable for at least several years and possibly forever. Going on crusade was
not an “easy out” for younger sons (as used to be thought) nor was it a reliable
treasure-hunting expedition; it impoverished many more people than it profited.
Nonetheless, because of the spiritual and social rewards on offer for crusading,
crusade leaders were never able to fully stop people of both genders and all
classes from accompanying armed parties on crusade, and it is fair to say that
many expeditions, especially those to the Levant, included a wide range of age, social classes, and
military experience.
Essay by Dr. Susanna Throop
The impact of the crusades
It is hard to summarize the impact of a movement that spanned centuries and continents, crossed
social lines, and affected all levels of culture. However, there are a few central effects that can be
highlighted.
Military orders
First, the earliest military orders originated in Jerusalem in the wake of the First Crusade. A miltary
order is a religious order in which members take traditional monastic vows—communal poverty,
chastity, and obedience—but also commit to violence on behalf of the Christian faith. Well-known
examples include the Knights Templar (officially endorsed in 1129), the Knights Hospitaller
(confirmed by papal bull in 1113), and the Teutonic Knights (originated in the late twelfth century).
The military orders represented a major theological and military development, and went on to play
central roles in the formation of key political units that still
exist today as nation-states.
Wall plaque, Ascalon, mid-twelfth to mid-thirteenth century. The Arabic
inscription commemorates the wall built as defense against crusaders. The arms
of Sir Hugh Wake (Lincoln, England) were later carved over that, confirming the
1241 crusader reconquest of the city.
Territorial expansion
Second, crusading played a major role in European territorial expansion. The First Crusade resulted
in the formation of the crusader states in the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean), which were initially
governed, and in small part populated, by settlers from Europe.
Crusading in northern and eastern Europe led to the expansion of kingdoms like Denmark and
Sweden, as well as the creation of brand-new political units, for example in Prussia. As areas around
the Baltic Sea were taken by the crusaders, traders and settlers—mostly German—moved in and
profited economically.
In the Mediterranean Sea, crusading led to the conquest and colonization of many islands, which
arguably helped ensure Christian control of Mediterranean trade routes (at least for as long as the
islands were held). Crusading also played a role in the conquest of the Iberian peninsula (now Spain
and Portugal). This was finally completed in 1492, when the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II and
Isabella I conquered the last Muslim community on the peninsula—the city of Granada. They expelled
Jews from the country in the same year. And of course, they also authorized and supported the
expeditions of Christopher Columbus, who—like many European explorers of his day—believed that
the expansion of the Christian faith was one of his duties.
Impact in Europe (religious and secular)
Third, the crusading movement impacted internal European development in a few important ways.
The movement helped both to militarize the medieval
western Church and to sustain criticism of that
militarization. It arguably helped solidify the pope’s
control over the Church and made certain financial
innovations central to Church operations. And it both
reflected and influenced devotional trends. For
example, while there was some dedication to St.
George from the early Middle Ages, the intensity of that
devotion soared in Europe after he reportedly
intervened miraculously at the Battle of Antioch in
1098, during the First Crusade.
Secular political theories were influenced by crusading,
especially in France and the Iberian peninsula, and government institutions evolved in part to meet
the logistical needs of crusading. Credit infrastructures within Europe rose to meet similar needs, and
some locales—Venice, in particular—benefitted significantly in economic terms.
It goes without saying that the crusades also had a highly negative effect on interfaith relations.
Impact world-wide
Fourth, the crusading movement has left an imprint on the world as a whole. For example, many of
the national flags of Europe incorporate a cross. In addition, many images of crusaders in our popular
culture are indebted to the nineteenth century. Some in that century, like the novelist Sir Walter Scott,
portrayed crusaders as brave and glamorous yet backward and unenlightened; simultaneously, they
depicted Muslims as heroic, intelligent, and liberal. Others more wholeheartedly romanticized
crusading.
George Inness, Classical Landscape (March of the Crusaders), 1850, oil on canvas
(Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, Massachusetts)
These trends in nineteenth-century European culture impacted the
Islamic world. Sometimes this influence was quite direct. In 1898
German Emperor Wilhelm II visited the grave of Saladin (Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn
Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, a Muslim leader who led the recapture of Jerusalem
in 1187) and was appalled at its state of disrepair. He paid to have it
rebuilt, thus helping encourage modern Islamic appreciation of Saladin.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, visit to Jerusalem, 1898
Sometimes the European influence was more diffuse. Modern crusading histories in the Islamic world
began to be written in the 1890s, when the Ottoman Empire was in crisis. After the Ottomans, some
Arab Nationalists interpreted nineteenth-century imperialism as crusading, and thus linked their
efforts to end imperial rule with the efforts of Muslims to resist crusading in previous centuries.
It would be reassuring to believe that nobody in the West has provided grounds for such beliefs, but it
would not be true. Sadly, the effects of the crusading movement—at least, as it is now remembered
and reimagined—seem to be still unfolding.
Text by Dr. Susanna Throop