The Rise of the Islamic Empires and Christian Responses

Series of Holy Wars launched by the Christian States of Europe against the Saracens (Moslems). There were 9 Crusades. The first 4 were called the principal crusades and the remaining are the minor crusades.

Massacre of 3000 Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem which prompted the first Crusade. Religious conviction Instinct to fight Teaching of Peter the Hermit Threat of the Turks Council of Clermont led by Pope Urban II

To release the Holy Land, in particular Jerusalem, from the Saracens, but extended to seizing Spain from the Moors, the Slavs and Pagans from Eastern Europe, and the Islands of Mediterranean.

On Europe of Middle Ages were an important factor in the history of progress in civilization. Influenced the wealth and power of the Catholic Church, political, etc.

The first prophet of Islam Born in poverty about A.D. 570 Married at the age of 25 to Kadija Archangel Gabriel had appeared to him in a sun-drunk vision, informing him of the unity of God, the necessity for righteousness, the reward of paradise for the faithful, and the reservation of hell for the negligent and evil. Died in A.D. 632 at the age of 62

He simply demands for surrender for ISLAMS means SURRENDER. Moslem- one who surrenders himself

1095-1099 1146 1189 1200-1204 1212 1217-1221 1228-1229 1248-1254 1270

The Peoples Crusade The Second Crusade The Third Crusade The Fourth Crusade The Childrens Crusade The Sixth Crusade The Seventh Crusade The Eight Crusade The Ninth Crusade

This was the greatest and most successful of the crusades, for it united Christendom as never before. The first wave was under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless. The main route taken was along the Danube Valley and so to Constantinople. Greek Emperor Alexius, dismayed by their conduct, shipped them across Asia Minor, but they were massacred by the Seljuk Turks.

In 1146, St. Bernard preached the need for the Second Crusade, which started the following year, led by Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad III. Less successful than the First Crusade. The aims were divided and uncertain. In 1169, a Kurdish adventurer named Saladin began to unite the Moslem world from Cairo to Bagdad and led the Jehad or Holy War against the Christians.

Saladins capture of Jerusalem provoked the Third Crusade. Led by Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), King Philip Augustus of France, and King Richard (Coeur de Lion) of England. The Third Crusade was a failure. Jerusalem was not retaken from the Saracens.

During interval of the 2nd and 3rd Crusade the Hospitallers and the Templars were created. By the 3rd Crusade the Teutonic Knights were created. The Moslems warriors were called the ASSASINS or HASHIHIN.

Brought by Persian Hasanas-Sabah. Chief objective is was political or religious assassination.

The Middle Ages saw the emergence of a military order called the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Their name was to become the Templar Knights. The Knights of the Middle Ages were the principal members of the Templar Knights and were supported by lower class soldiers and priests.

The Knights Hospitaller were Knights of the Order of Saint John the Hospitaller who were also known by such names as Knights of Rhodes, Knights of Malta, Cavaliers of Malta, and Order of St John of Jerusalem. The Hospitallers grew out of a brotherhood for the care of sick pilgrims in a hospital at Jerusalem following the First Crusade in 1100 AD.

Teutonic Knights were members of the order of the Teutonic Knights of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin. The Teutonic Knights were a military-religious order of knights that restricted membership to Germans. They were part of the original Hospitallers, but under Hermann von Salza they split from the main branch and founded their own order, taking on a very distinctive white cloak bearing a stark black cross on the left shoulder.

Upon the fall of Acre in 1291 they retired to Venice where Emperor Frederick II commissioned them to convert the heathens in Prussia, Lithuania, and Estonia, becoming a very successful order headquartered in Marienburg from 1309-1509.

The Fourth Crusade resulted from Pope Innocents exhortations. Began when the armies started marching through Lombardy to Venice. Did not reach the Holy Land .

The girls and boys of France and Germany moved southwards to the Mediterranean, expecting to walk dry-shod across the sea to the Holy City. From the 30,000 French children only one returned. The rest were auctioned off in Algiers, or sold into slavery in Cairo. The German boys and girls were more fortunate; of their 20,000, a tenth straggled across back the Alps.

Pope Innocent was succeeded by Honorious, whose own death in 1227 placed Pope Gregory in a righteous position. He threatened the German emperor Frederick with excommunication unless he conducted a new crusade.

Led by King Louis IX of France, the Seventh and Eighth Crusades were complete failures. In the Seventh Crusade Louis sailed to Egypt in 1248 and recaptured Damietta, but after he and his army were routed he had to return it as well as a massive ransom just to get free. In 1270 he set off on the Eighth Crusade, landing in North Africa in the hope of converting the sultan of Tunis to Christianity but died before he got far.

Led by King Edward I of England in 1271 who tried to join Louis in Tunis, the Ninth Crusade would fail in the end. Edward arrived after Louis had died and moved against the Mamluk sultan Baibers. He didn't achieve much, though, and returned home to England after he learned that his father Henry III had died.