The greatest development in the era of the Crusades received. Abstract: The culture of the Middle Ages and the Crusades. What trip was the most unusual

The Crusades The Crusades are a broad military and colonization movement to the East, in which Western European sovereigns, feudal lords, chivalry, part of the townspeople and the peasantry took part. Traditionally, the era of the Crusades is considered the period from 1096

Introduction 3

1. The Inquisition and the Crusades 4

2. Monasticism and the Crusades 6

Conclusion 10

Literature 11

Introduction

In the Middle Ages, heresies (Greek - a special dogma) reached the greatest development. They represented all sorts of deviations from the official Christian dogma and cult. Heretical movements were mainly anti-church and anti-feudal in nature and became massive in connection with the emergence and flourishing of cities. Medieval heresies were divided into burgher and peasant-plebeian. The latter were more radical, the peasants often defended their beliefs with weapons in their hands. Heretical are the movements of the “Apostle Brethren”, the Taborites, the Albigensians, and the Arnoldists. Characteristically, the heretics perceived the Christian Church in the same way that the Jewish prophets and the first Christians-communists perceived the pagans. Heretics created simple religious organizations, preached "apostolic poverty", introduced simplified rituals, recognized only the New Testament as the source of faith. Particularly sharp attacks from them Caused the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church - full or partial remission of sins. One of the means of combating heresies was the official recognition of certain moderate sects and the establishment on their basis of mendicant orders, the most significant of which were the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian. Mystical ideas were widespread among heresies, for example, many positions in the teachings of M. Eckhart were declared heretical.

1. The Inquisition and the Crusades

To combat mysticism, secret litigation and torture, sophistic tricks and intimidation were used, with the help of which a confession of guilt was extorted from the victims. From the 13th century the inquisition (from lat. - search) existed as an independent institution under the authority of the head of the Catholic Church - the pope.

The actions of the inquisitors in Spain were especially cruel. Spying and denunciations flourished, sophisticated methods and terrible instruments of torture were invented. The Inquisition set itself the goal of enabling heretics to experience the torments of hell during their lifetime. The most monstrous thing was that all the tortures and executions were done "in the name of Christ." “Judge not, lest you be judged,” Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount. “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with what measure you use, it will be measured to you.” The actions of the Inquisition testify to how tenacious purely pagan attitudes to faith and man were in medieval society. After all, the affirmation of faith through torture and humiliation cannot be called Christian. On the other hand, the inquisitors themselves, with equal zeal, sent both the “sorcerer” and the scientist to the stake. The inquisitors did not recognize the difference between sorcery and science, between paganism and freethinking. Seeing any deviation of thought as a manifestation of paganism and fighting it with pagan methods, the inquisitors could not establish anything but paganism in medieval society. This struggle turned out, if not the triumph of paganism, then at least the defeat of true Christianity and, as a result, a non-religious culture of the 20th century.

The product of medieval culture in Western Europe was the crusades, which lasted for almost two centuries (1096-1270).

Aggressive goals in relation to the Middle East were covered by the slogans of fighting the "infidels" (Muslims) and protecting the "holy land" (Palestine). There were eight campaigns in total, between the fourth and fifth campaigns armies of crusader children were organized, who were also used to liberate Jerusalem. Large feudal lords and chivalry, clergy and peasants participated in the campaigns. Spiritual and knightly orders of the Templars, Hospitallers, the Teutonic Order were created. The campaigns brought many disasters to the countries of the East and West, they contributed to the destruction of Christian shrines, which include life and peace. But at the same time, the crusades led to the development of trade, crafts, and the spread of the spiritual influence of the East. Finally, the campaigns influenced the nature of European culture, expressed in a penchant for wandering, for discoveries, in its restlessness and mobility.

2. Monasticism and the Crusades

Antiquity strove for the ideal of man, in which the soul and body would be in harmony. However, in the realization of this ideal, the body was much more fortunate, especially if we have in mind the Roman culture. Taking into account the bitter lessons of Roman society, in which a kind of cult of physical pleasures and pleasures developed, Christianity gave a clear preference to the soul, the spiritual principle in man. It calls a person to self-restraint in everything, to voluntary asceticism, to the suppression of sensual, physical desires of the body.

Proclaiming the unconditional primacy of the spiritual over the bodily, emphasizing the inner world of man, Christianity has done a lot to form the deep spirituality of man, his moral exaltation.

The main moral and values ​​of Christianity are Faith, Hope and Love. They are closely related to each other and pass one into another. However, the main among them is Love, which means, first of all, a spiritual connection and love for God and which opposes physical and carnal love, which is declared sinful and vile. At the same time, Christian love extends to all "neighbors", including those who not only do not reciprocate, but also show hatred and hostility. Christ urges: "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you and persecute you."

Love for God makes faith in Him natural, easy and simple, requiring no effort. Faith means a special state of mind that does not require any evidence, arguments or facts. Such faith, in turn, easily and naturally transforms into love for God. Hope in Christianity means the idea of ​​salvation, which is central to many religions.

In Christianity, this idea has several meanings: salvation from evil in earthly life in this world, deliverance from the fate of going to hell at the future Last Judgment, staying in paradise in the other world as a fair reward for faith and love. Not everyone will be rewarded with salvation, but only the righteous, those who strictly follow the commandments of Christ. Among the commandments are the suppression of pride and greed, which are the main sources of evil, repentance for sins committed, humility, patience, non-resistance to evil by violence, requirements not to kill, not to take someone else's, not to commit adultery, honor parents, and many other moral norms and laws, observance which gives hope for salvation from the torments of hell.

The dominance of religion did not make culture completely homogeneous. On the contrary, one of the important features of medieval culture is precisely the emergence in it of well-defined subcultures caused by the strict division of society into three estates: the clergy, the feudal aristocracy, and the third estate.

The clergy was considered the highest class, it was divided into white - the priesthood - and black - monasticism. He was in charge of “heavenly affairs”, concern for faith and spiritual life. It was precisely this, especially monasticism, that most fully embodied Christian ideals and values. However, it was also far from unity, as evidenced by the differences in the understanding of Christianity between the orders that existed in monasticism.

Benedict of Nursia - the founder of the Benedictine Order - opposed the extremes of hermitage, abstinence and asceticism, was quite tolerant of property and wealth, highly valued physical labor, especially agriculture and gardening, believing that the monastic community should not only fully provide itself with everything necessary, but also help in this entire district, showing an example of active Christian charity. Some communities of this order highly valued education, encouraged not only physical, but also mental labor, in particular the development of agronomic and medical knowledge.

On the contrary, Francis of Assisi - the founder of the Franciscan order, the order of mendicant monks - called for extreme asceticism, preached complete, holy poverty, because the possession of any property requires its protection, that is, the use of force, and this is contrary to the moral principles of Christianity. He saw the ideal of complete poverty and carelessness in the life of birds.

Conclusion

The culture of the Middle Ages - for all the ambiguity of its content - occupies a worthy place in the history of world culture. The Renaissance gave the Middle Ages a very critical and harsh assessment. However, subsequent epochs introduced significant amendments to this estimate. Romanticism of the 18th-19th centuries drew its inspiration from medieval chivalry, seeing in it truly human ideals and values. Women of all subsequent eras, including ours, experience an inescapable nostalgia for real male knights, for knightly nobility, generosity and courtesy. The modern crisis of spirituality encourages us to turn to the experience of the Middle Ages, again and again to solve the eternal problem of the relationship between spirit and flesh.

Literature

Bitsilli P.M. Elements of medieval culture. SPb., 1995.

Darkevich V.P. Folk culture of the Middle Ages. M., 1988.

Polishchuk V.I. Culturology. M., 1999.

Bitsilli P.M. Elements of medieval culture. SPb., 1995.

Polishchuk V.I. Culturology. M., 1999.

Darkevich V.P. Folk culture of the Middle Ages. M., 1988.

The era of the crusades of the Middle Ages, which lasted from the end of the 11th to the end of the 13th century, is very surprising in its scope, grandeur and strength.

The Crusades were military in nature. Western European Christians organized them to liberate the Holy Land from Muslims. All social strata of the Western European population participated in them: from kings to servants.

The reasons for the start of the crusades were:

• the capture of Jerusalem by the Seljuk Turks in 1071 and blocking access to the Holy Places;
• a request for help from the Pope of Rome by the emperor of Byzantium - Alexei 1st Komnenos.

There were eight crusades. The first campaign in 1096 ended with the capture of Jerusalem and the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The second crusade was organized in 1147, the reason for which was the capture of the city of Edessa by the Muslim emir Zangi (it was considered the center of early Christianity). It was the liberation of Edessa and the weakening of the forces of Zangi that became the main goal of the second crusade.

The participants in this crusade were mainly knights and peasants from Germany and France, whose number reached 140 thousand people. This army was led by the kings of their countries - Conrad 3rd and Louis 7th.

The second crusade failed, accelerating the process of strengthening the Seljuk states. Subsequently, Saladin, who became the head of this state, defeated the royal army of Jerusalem, capturing the city.

Further crusades lasted until 1291, until the existence of the crusader states in the East was put to an end. Many of the campaigns ended in failure. One of the reasons for the failures that influenced the course of the crusades is the rivalry of the priests with the emperors.

According to Russian historiography, at the beginning of the 13th century. the Catholic Church allegedly carried out a crusade against Russia. The moment for the offensive was chosen the period after the Russian lands, but despite this, the Russian people, led by the Russian people, were able not only to repel aggression from the West, but also to defeat them on the banks of the Neva and Lake Peipus. However, this information is controversial.

Consider the pros and cons of the Crusades.

Benefits of the Crusades include:

• borrowing by the West of culture and science from the East;
• opening of new trade routes;
• change in the way of life of the European population (change of clothes, personal hygiene).

Negative results of the Crusades:

• quite a lot of victims on both sides;
• collapse of the Byzantine Empire;
• the power and influence of the Pope has declined significantly due to his unfulfilled plans;
• destruction of many cultural monuments.

The historical significance of the crusades, of course, was their influence on the political and social system of Western Europe. They played a big role in the formation of the financial aristocracy and helped develop capitalist relations in the cities of Italy.

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Theme: Knighthood and the Crusades

Introduction

The Middle Ages is usually called the period from I century. BC. according to the XIV century. AD This era has no clear time limits, and historians define the time frame of this period in different ways.

Opinions about the origin of chivalry are quite different: some attribute the emergence of chivalry to Homer and ancient Hellas, others to the early Middle Ages.

A lot of literature and Internet sites are devoted to this topic. But the opinions of historians of different times are different.

In Soviet historiography, the opinion was more often held about the almost complete failure of chivalry. The author's main argument was usually "the monstrous weight of armor" in which it is impossible to fight. If a knight was sitting on a horse, then he was still worth something as a fighter, but as soon as he was thrown off, he could not fight.

Modern domestic and foreign historiography considers chivalry to be the strongest force in Europe. Rare modern historians consider chivalry untenable and cite the Battle of the Ice and other battles in the Baltic as an example.

1. Chivalry

1.1 Chivalry in the history of western and central Europe

Chivalry is a special privileged social stratum of medieval society. Traditionally, this concept is associated with the history of the countries of Western and Central Europe, where in the heyday of the Middle Ages, in fact, all secular feudal warriors belonged to chivalry. But more often this term is used in relation to medium and small feudal lords, as opposed to the nobility. The 9th and 10th centuries were harsh times in the life of all countries of Western Europe. None of them was a cohesive strong whole. France, Germany, Italy were divided into thousands, and even tens of thousands of small and large estates, the owners of which - dukes, counts, barons - were almost independent sovereigns of their estates. They did judgment and reprisals against the serfs and free population of their lands, disposing of their life and death, imposed taxes and taxes on them, gathered troops, declared war and made peace. The peasants, of course, were not able to carry out horse service, and therefore it was carried by vassals who received land from their lord under the condition of military service. Such armed riders, who were obliged to appear at the request of their lord on a horse in heavy armor and accompanied by a certain number of foot and horse soldiers recruited from dependent people of their estate, bore the name of knights.

At this time, conditional forms of feudal landownership became widespread, first for life, later hereditary. When land was transferred to a feud, its complainant became a lord (suzerain), and the recipient became a vassal of the latter, which involved military service (compulsory military service did not exceed 40 days a year) and the performance of some other duties in favor of the lord. These included monetary "assistance" in the event of a son's knighting, the wedding of his daughter, the need to ransom a seigneur who was captured. According to custom, the vassals participated in the court of the lord, were present in his council. The ceremony of registration of vassal relations was called homage, and the oath of allegiance to the lord was called foie. If the size of the land received for the service allowed, the new owner, in turn, transferred part of it as fiefs to his vassals. This is how a multi-stage system of vassalage ("suzerainty", "feudal hierarchy", "feudal ladder") developed from the supreme overlord to the knights who did not have their own vassals. For the continental countries of Western Europe, the rules of vassal relations reflected the principle "the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal", while, for example, in England, direct vassal dependence of all feudal landowners on the king was introduced with compulsory service in the royal army.

The hierarchy of vassal relations repeated the hierarchy of land holdings and determined the principle of the formation of the military militia of the feudal lords. So, along with the establishment of feudal relations, the formation of chivalry as a service military-feudal class, which flourished in the 11th-14th centuries, went on. Military affairs became its main social function. The military profession gave rights and privileges, determined special estate views, ethical norms, traditions, and cultural values.

The military duties of the knights included defending the honor and dignity of the suzerain, and most importantly, his land from encroachment both by neighboring feudal rulers in internecine wars and by troops of other states in the event of an external attack. In the context of civil strife, the line between defending one's own possessions and seizing foreign lands was rather shaky, and a champion of justice in words often turned out to be an invader in deed, not to mention participation in conquest campaigns organized by the royal government, such as, for example, numerous campaigns of German emperors in Italy, or by the Pope himself, like the Crusades.

1.2 Knight's army and its weapons

The knightly army in those days, when there was no gunpowder and firearms, was a powerful, hard to crush force. Combat armor made the knight almost invulnerable. Mail with mittens and a hauberg tightly fitted the body, reaching to the very knees, leggings covered his legs, a helmet (tophelm), worn over a ringed hood, protected him from enemy blows to the head. To repel blows, a wooden shield upholstered in leather was used, in the middle of which there was a plaque made of gilded iron, and to attack the enemy - a wide, short sword with a flat handle, which was attached to the belt and a long spear with an iron tip. The infantry and arrows tried to kill the horses in order to dismount the horsemen in this way, but the knights always had a fresh horse in reserve. They never went to battle alone, but always took one or two squires with them, who remained behind the battle line during the fights with two or three horses and spare weapons. These squires were recruited either from dependent people or from knightly sons who had not yet received the rank of knights. Its weapons and tactics corresponded to military tasks, the scale of military operations and the technical level of its time. The knightly army consisted of detachments that were built in a “wedge” in battle, that is, in such a way that no more than 5 people entered the tip of the column - in the 1st row, and then went 2 rows of 7 - then rows of 9, 11, 13 human; as for the rest of the knightly cavalry, it lined up in a regular quadrangle. The purpose of the wedge was to break through the closed formation of the enemy, and then fight each one individually.

Feudal wars did not exhaust the social role of chivalry. Under the conditions of feudal fragmentation, with the relative weakness of royal power, chivalry, fastened by a system of vassalage into a single privileged corporation, protected the feudal lords' property rights to land, the basis of their dominance. A striking example of this is the history of the suppression of the largest peasant uprising in France - Jacquerie (1358-1359), which broke out during the Hundred Years War. At the same time, the knights representing the belligerents, the British and French, united under the banner of the Navarrese king Charles the Evil and turned their weapons against the rebellious peasants, solving a common social problem. Chivalry also influenced the political processes of the era, since the social interests of the feudal class as a whole and the norms of knightly morality to a certain extent restrained centrifugal tendencies and limited the feudal freemen. During the process of state centralization, chivalry (medium and small feudal lords) constituted the main military force of the kings in their opposition to the nobility in the struggle for territorial unification and real power in the state. This was the case, for example, in France in the 14th century, when, in violation of the old norm of vassal law, a significant part of the chivalry was recruited into the army of the king on terms of monetary payment.

Participation in the knightly army required a certain security, and the land award was not only a reward for the service, but also a necessary material condition for its implementation, since the knight acquired both a war horse and expensive heavy weapons (spear, sword, mace, armor, armor for a horse) on own funds, not to mention the maintenance of the corresponding retinue. Knightly armor included up to 200 parts, and the weight of the military equipment of a heavily armed warrior reached 50 kg, not counting the armor intended for the horse. Over time, the complexity and price of armor grew. The training of future warriors was served by the system of knightly training and education. In Western Europe, boys up to the age of 7 grew up in a family and usually remained in female hands, and after 7, his knightly upbringing began. But it did not consist in teaching any sciences. Few people cared about the development of the mind at that time. Few of the knights knew how to write and read: literacy and needlework were considered rather the property of women. Thus, from a very young age, the son of a knight was trained in knightly occupations: he disappeared in the forest for days on end, learned to handle a falcon, carry it on his arm, tame it on a bird, hunt with dogs, fight with swords and spears. That was the whole science. When he turned 12-13 years old, he was sent to the lord's court, where he completed his education as a page, then as a squire. The lord entrusted him with various branches of his economy: taking care of horses and dogs, meeting his guests, helping to get off the horses, setting the table, and so on. When the youth reached the age of 15, finally, the ceremony of consecrating them to the knights was performed. However, often the initiation took place sometimes later, sometimes earlier. In particular, by the 13th century, the desire to push it back to the 21st century is noticeable. Sometimes it was not there at all, because not everyone could withstand the catastrophic expenses that accompanied this rite.

In the XII-XIII centuries, specific concepts of honor and duty were developed, which idealized chivalry and were used by the ruling class primarily for class purposes: to oppose the "noble" chivalry supposedly intended for dominance, the common people, to strengthen the estate organization of feudal lords, and so on. Devotion to religion, devotion to one's lord, militancy were declared the highest virtues of a knight. In relation to persons below him on the social ladder, the knight was often a rude rapist. In the process of the formation of a feudal centralized monarchy, small and medium chivalry became the main pillar of royal power. Tradition required a knight to be knowledgeable in matters of religion, to know the rules of court etiquette, to possess the "seven knightly virtues": horseback riding, fencing, skillful handling of a spear, swimming, hunting, playing checkers, writing and singing poems in honor of the lady of the heart. The most favorite pleasure was tournaments, which were arranged constantly and everywhere by kings, and sovereign princes, and simple barons, sometimes in order to adequately celebrate some event, the wedding of a daughter, the knighting of a son, the conclusion of peace with the enemy, and sometimes simply, meaning only fun. The news of the upcoming pleasure was quickly spread by rumors and messengers, who were sent with letters to the most noble persons. Then in all the castles hasty preparations began.

1.3 Rite of passage and moral and ethical standards

Not every feudal lord could be a knight at the same time. Knightly dignity was communicated only through a special rite of passage. On the other hand, it was not necessary to own flax in order to become a knight. For special merits, a simple peasant who did not own a feud could also be consecrated to this dignity. However, as a general rule, knighthood was an institution for feudal lords. Knighting symbolized entry into the privileged class, familiarization with its rights and duties, and was accompanied by a special ceremony. According to European custom, the knight initiating the rank struck the initiate with a sword on the shoulder, pronounced the initiation formula, put on a helmet and golden spurs, presented a sword - a symbol of knightly dignity - and a shield with a coat of arms. The initiate, in turn, took an oath of allegiance and an obligation to uphold the code of honor. The ritual of knightly virtues attributed military courage and contempt for danger, pride, a noble attitude towards a woman, attention to members of knightly families in need of help. Avarice was subject to condemnation, betrayal was not forgiven.

But the ideal was not always in harmony with reality. As for predatory campaigns in foreign lands (for example, the capture of Jerusalem or Constantinople during the Crusades), the knightly "exploits" brought grief, ruin, reproach and shame to more than one common people. The brutal exploitation of the peasants, the seizure of booty in feudal wars, the robbery of merchants on the roads were the main sources of knightly income. In an effort to seize foreign lands and wealth, the chivalry took an active part in predatory predatory enterprises - the crusades.

2. Crusades

There were about 54 crusades against the Gentiles. There were 7 campaigns in the Holy Land that had the greatest impact on history.

2.1 First crusade 1095-1099.

The campaign, led by Duke Gottfried of Bouillon, Count Raymond of Toulouse, Duke Bohemond of Tarentum, Duke Robert of Normandy and Count Robert of Flanders, was the most successful and ended with the conquest of Palestine and the capture of Jerusalem and the foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

According to legend, 100,000 knights and 600,000 foot soldiers took part in the campaign; the Pope in one of his letters speaks of 300,000 people. Chronicles give the same figures for Muslims - for example, in the army of the Mosul Emir Kerbogi, who tried to unblock Antioch besieged by the crusaders in 1098, there were allegedly 200 thousand people. Modern historians reduce the original crusader army to 4,500 knights, 30,000 infantry and an unknown number of servants. By the time of the siege of Jerusalem in 1099, their number had decreased to 1200 knights and 12 thousand foot soldiers (both due to losses and due to the garrisons left in the previously conquered lands). After the victory at Ascalon over the Egyptians and the dissolution of the crusaders, Gottfried of Bouillon had only 300 knights and 2,000 foot soldiers left in Jerusalem.

In April 1097, the crusaders crossed the Bosphorus. Soon, Nicaea surrendered to the Byzantines, and on July 1, the crusaders defeated Sultan Kilij-Arslan at Dorilei and thus paved their way through Asia Minor. Moving on, the crusaders found precious allies against the Turks in the princes of Lesser Armenia, whom they began to support in every possible way. Baldwin, separated from the main army, established himself in Edessa. For the crusaders, this was very important, given the position of the city, which has since constituted their extreme eastern outpost. In October 1097, the crusaders besieged Antioch, which they managed to take only in June of the following year. In Antioch, the crusaders, in turn, were besieged by the emir of Mosul Kerboga and, suffering hunger, were in great danger; they managed, however, to get out of the city and defeat Kerboga. After a long quarrel with Raymond, Antioch was taken over by Bohemond, who, even before its fall, managed to force the rest of the crusader leaders to agree to the transfer of this important city to him. While disputes were going on over Antioch, an unrest occurred in the army, dissatisfied with the delay, which forced the princes, ending the strife, to move on. The same thing happened later: while the army was rushing towards Jerusalem, the leaders were arguing over each city taken.

On June 7, 1099, the holy city finally opened before the eyes of the crusaders, and on July 15 they took it, and carried out a terrible massacre among the Muslims. Gained power in Jerusalem Gottfried of Bouillon. Having defeated the Egyptian army near Ascalon, he ensured for some time the conquest of the crusaders from this side. After the death of Gottfried, Baldwin the Elder became king of Jerusalem, who handed over Edessa to Baldwin the Younger. In 1101, a second large crusading army from Lombardy, Germany and France came to Asia Minor, led by many noble and wealthy knights; but most of this army was destroyed by the combined forces of several emirs. Meanwhile, the crusaders who had established themselves in Syria (their number increased with new pilgrims arriving almost continuously) had to wage a hard struggle with the neighboring Muslim rulers. Bohemond was taken prisoner by one of them and ransomed by the Armenians. In addition, since the spring of 1099, the crusaders have been at war with the Greeks because of the coastal cities. In Asia Minor, the Byzantines managed to regain a significant territory; their successes here could have been even more significant if they had not spent their forces in the fight against the crusaders because of the remote Syrian and Cilician regions.

2.2 Second Crusade 1145-1149

The campaign, led by the French king Louis VII and the German king Conrad III, was organized after the conquest of Edessa by the Seljuks. It ended in a terrible defeat of the crusaders, who lost tens of thousands of dead and died of disease and hunger.

Conrad arrived in Constantinople by land (through Hungary), and in mid-September 1147 he sent troops to Asia, but after a clash with the Seljuks at Dorilei, he returned to the sea. The French, frightened by the failure of Conrad, went along the western coast of Asia Minor; then the king and noble crusaders sailed on ships to Syria, where they arrived in March 1148. The rest of the crusaders wanted to break through by land and for the most part died. In April Konrad arrived in Akka; but the siege of Damascus, undertaken together with the Jerusalemites, failed, due to the selfish and short-sighted policy of the latter. Then Conrad, and in the fall of the following year, Louis VII returned to their homeland. Edessa, taken by the Christians after the death of Imadeddin-Tsenki, but soon again taken from them by his son Nureddin, was now forever lost to the crusaders. The 4 decades that followed were a difficult time for Christians in the East. In 1176, the Byzantine emperor Manuel suffered a terrible defeat from the Seljuk Turks at Miriokefal. Nureddin took possession of the lands lying NE from Antioch, took Damascus and became a close and extremely dangerous neighbor for the crusaders. His commander Shirku (of Kurdish origin) established himself in Egypt. The crusaders, as it were, were surrounded by enemies. Upon the death of Shirku, the title of vizier and power over Egypt passed to his famous nephew Saladin, son of Eyyub.

2.3 Third Crusade 1189-1192

It began after the Egyptian sultan Salah ad-din (Saladin) conquered Jerusalem. The campaign was led by the German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, the French king Philip II and the English king Richard I the Lionheart. On June 10, 1190, Frederick Barbarossa fell off his horse while crossing the river and choked. His death became a harbinger (and possibly the cause) of future defeat. The victories of Richard the Lionheart extended the existence of crusader states in Palestine, but Jerusalem could not be returned. However, as a result of the peace agreement, Christian pilgrims were given free access to Jerusalem.

In March 1190, Frederick's troops crossed into Asia, moved to the southeast and with difficulty made their way through all of Asia Minor. When crossing the river Salef the emperor drowned. Part of his army dispersed, many died, the rest came to Antioch, and then to Akka. In the spring of 1191 the kings of France (Philip II Augustus) and English (Richard the Lionheart) and Duke Leopold of Austria arrived. On the way, Richard the Lionheart defeated the Emperor of Cyprus, Isaac Komnenos, who was forced to surrender; he was imprisoned in a Syrian castle, where he was kept to death, and Cyprus fell into the power of the crusaders. The siege of Akka went badly, due to strife between the French and English kings, as well as between Guido of Lusignan and the margrave Conrad of Montferrat, who, after the death of Guido's wife, claimed the crown of Jerusalem and married Elizabeth, sister and heiress of the deceased Sibylla. Only on July 12, 1191, Akka surrendered after almost two years of siege. Conrad and Guido reconciled after the capture of Akka; the former was recognized as Guido's heir and received Tyre, Beirut and Sidon. Shortly thereafter, Philip II sailed home with part of the French knights, but Hugh of Burgundy, Henry of Champagne and many other noble crusaders remained in Syria. And after the capture of Akka, the crusaders acted sluggishly and did not dare to decisively attack Jerusalem, although they made weak attempts to do so. Finally, in September 1192, a truce was concluded with Saladin: Jerusalem remained in the power of the Muslims, Christians were only allowed to visit St. city. After that, King Richard sailed to Europe. A circumstance that somewhat alleviated the position of the crusaders was the death of Saladin in March 1193: the division of his possessions between his numerous sons became a source of civil strife among the Muslims. Soon, however, Saladin's brother, Almelik-Aladil (El-Melik-el-Adil), came forward, who took possession of Egypt, southern Syria and Mesopotamia and took the title of sultan. After the failure of the third crusade, Emperor Henry VI began to gather in the Holy Land, accepting the cross in May 1195; but he died in September 1197. Some detachments of the crusaders who had set off earlier nevertheless arrived in Akka. Somewhat earlier than the emperor, Henry of Champagne died, who was married to the widow of Conrad of Montferrat and therefore wore the Jerusalem crown. Amalrich of Cyprus (brother of Guido of Lusignan), who married Henry's widow, was now chosen king. Meanwhile, military operations in Syria were not going well; a significant part of the crusaders returned to their homeland. Around this time, the German hospital fraternity of St. Mary, founded during the 3rd crusade, was transformed into a Teutonic spiritual and knightly order.

Salah ad-din (Saladin)

Ruler of Egypt from 1171, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Kurdish by origin. The son of Ayyub ibn Shadi, one of the commanders of the Syrian Sultan Nur-ad-din, who successfully fought the crusaders. In 1164-69 he participated in military campaigns against Egypt. In 1169 he was appointed vizier of Egypt, and in 1171, after the death of the last caliph of the Fatimid dynasty, he seized power in Egypt and proclaimed the suzerainty of the Abbasids, receiving from them in 1174 the title of sultan. After the death of Nur-ad-din in 1174-86, he subjugated his Syrian possessions and some possessions of minor Iraqi rulers. On July 3-4, 1187, the army of Salah ad-Din defeated the crusaders near Hittin (Palestine), took Jerusalem on October 2, 1187, then drove the crusaders out of most of Syria and Palestine. The internal policy of Salah ad-din was characterized by the development of the military system, some tax cuts.

2.4 Fourth Crusade 1201-1204

Organized for a campaign against Egypt - the basis of Arab power. A victory in Egypt could rid the Holy Land of the Muslim threat. However, Venice took advantage of the situation to send the crusaders not to Egypt, but to Byzantium. Venice needed this because they had established strong trade ties with Egypt and its ruin by the crusaders would have brought losses to Venice. When the knights were transported by Venetian ships, they were offered to go to Constantinople (the capital of Byzantium), which the knights had long dreamed of seizing on the riches - they were angry that this city was so rich, and its inhabitants imagined themselves to be descendants of the Great Roman Empire. The siege of Constantinople lasted a long time. In 1204, the crusaders led by Boniface of Montferrat and Enrico Dandolo took Constantinople, and the European territories of the Byzantine Empire were divided between European feudal lords into several states: Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, Jerusalem. In its place, the Latin Empire arose, which lasted until 1261, when the Greeks regained Constantinople.

As a result, instead of getting rid of the Muslim threat, this crusade was the catalyst for the expansion of Muslim influence in the Mediterranean, since Byzantium was the strongest deterrent against the Saracens.

During the assault on Constantinople, the greatest values ​​of world culture were irretrievably destroyed or lost, since since the fall of the Roman Empire, it was Constantinople that was the only link between ancient culture and modernity, and subsequently the main cultural center of Christianity.

Despite the colossal negative consequences inflicted by this crusade; it was a very logical step from the point of view of the organizers, since the destruction of Byzantium was very beneficial for Venice and Rome both politically and economically, and, no less important, from a spiritual point of view (since Orthodoxy, professed for centuries in Byzantium, argued about the discrepancy between the Catholic dogma concerning the secular and spiritual authority of the Pope, the spirit and dogmas of true Christianity).

On April 12, 1204, the crusaders took Constantinople, and many monuments of art were destroyed. Alexei V and Theodore Laskaris, son-in-law of Alexei III, fled (the latter to Nicaea, where he established himself), and the victors formed the Latin empire. For Syria, the immediate consequence of this event was the diversion of the western knights from there. In addition, the power of the Franks in Syria was weakened by the struggle between Bohemond of Antioch and Leo of Armenia.

2.5 Fifth Crusade 1217-1221

Pursued the goal - an attack on Egypt. The Austrian Duke Leopold VI and the King of Hungary Andras II took part in the campaign, but Frederick II, the grandson of Barbarossa, could not take part, which, apparently, had fatal consequences for the enterprise. The Muslims were alarmed by the preparations of the crusaders and entered into negotiations, offering to give up Jerusalem. But their very lucrative offers were rejected. Soon the crusaders became victims of the ambitions of their leaders and the waters of the Nile, which overflowed its banks and flooded their camp.

The case of Innocent III (d. July 1216) was continued by Honorius III. Although Frederick II postponed the Campaign, and John of England died, in 1217 significant detachments of crusaders went to the Holy Land, with Andrew of Hungary, Duke Leopold VI of Austria and Otto of Meran at the head. Military operations were sluggish, and in 1218 King Andrew returned home. Soon, new detachments of crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, led by George of Vidsky and William of Holland (on the way, some of them helped Christians in the fight against the Moors in Portugal). The crusaders decided to attack Egypt, which at that time was the main center of Muslim power in Asia Minor. The Europeans were offered an extremely advantageous peace: the return of Jerusalem to the Christians. But this proposal was rejected by the crusaders. In November 1219, after more than a year of siege, the crusaders took Damietta. The removal from the camp of the crusaders Leopold and King John of Brienne was partly offset by the arrival in Egypt of Louis of Bavaria with the Germans. Part of the crusaders, convinced by the papal envoy Pelagius, moved to Mansura, but the campaign ended in complete failure, and the crusaders concluded a peace with Alcamil in 1221, according to which they received a free retreat, but pledged to clear Damietta and Egnpet in general. Meanwhile, Isabella, daughter of Mary Iolanthe and John of Brienne, married Friedrich II Hohenstaufen. He pledged to the pope to launch the sixth crusade of 1228-1229, which is also known as the campaign of Emperor Frederick

2.6 Sixth Crusade 1228-1229

The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick II Hohenstaufen, the grandson of Barbarossa, who was critical of religion and called Christ, Moses and Mohammed the three great deceivers, headed. He preferred to believe only in what could be proved by common sense and the logic of things. Frederick achieved his goal not by war, but by diplomacy: he managed to negotiate with the Muslims and conclude an agreement under which they gave him Jerusalem, because they did not want to fight the crusaders in the face of a new formidable enemy - the Tatar-Mongols. But success was relative: in 1244, the Muslims again captured Jerusalem.

2.7 First Crusade of St. Louis (Seventh Crusade) 1248-1254

Organized and headed by King Louis IX of France (1215-1270). The situation in the Holy Land was critical, the crusader states in Palestine hung in the balance. In August 1248, he went to Egypt at the head of a fleet of hundreds of ships with 35,000 troops. His goal was simple: to land in Egypt, capture the main cities of the country and then exchange them for territories captured by the Muslims in the Holy Land. Initially, he was successful. Capturing the fortified port city of Damietta, he launched an offensive against Cairo. But the Nile flooded, stopping the movement of the army for several months. In addition, the path to Cairo was blocked by the most powerful fortress of Al-Mansura, standing on a narrow peninsula near a wide branch of the Nile. The months-long siege of the fortress ended in disaster. The Muslims defeated the crusaders, burned the fleet that supplied them with food, in addition, an epidemic of pestilence began in the crusader camp, as the waters of the Nile carried past thousands of bloated corpses. The case perished, and Louis, himself infected with the disease, had to retreat to Damietta, but was captured along with the miserable remnants of his army, for the release of which he had to pay a huge ransom.

In the summer of 1249 the king landed in Egypt. The Christians occupied Damietta, and in December they reached Mansoura. In February of the following year, Robert, recklessly breaking into this city, died; a few days later the Muslims nearly took the Christian camp. When the new sultan Eyub (d. late 1249) arrived in Mansura, the Egyptians cut off the retreat of the crusaders; famine broke out in the Christian camp. In April, the Muslims inflicted a complete defeat on the crusaders; the king himself was taken prisoner and bought his freedom by the return of Damietta and the payment of a huge sum. Most of the crusaders returned to their homeland; Louis stayed in the Holy Land for another four years, but could not achieve any serious results. Among the Christians, despite the extremely dangerous situation, endless strife continued: the Templars were at enmity with the Johnites, the Genoese - with the Venetians and Pisans (due to trade rivalry).

Conclusion

By the end of the XV century. the decline of chivalric ideology and chivalry began. Then gunpowder was invented. At first, it was used only to blow up the walls of fortresses. As a result, mighty knightly castles are no longer invulnerable. Then the use of gunpowder led both to a change in the methods of war and to a decrease in the role of cavalry. Chivalry ceases to play an important role in the life of society. At the same time, the knightly ideology also declined.

However, for many centuries, chivalry was an important life ideal of medieval society, and the chivalrous way of life and behavior was the most important moral standard of the medieval aristocracy. Knighthood, like other classes, was a necessary element of medieval society, providing the stability of a social structure in which "warring" were as important as "praying" or "working".

List of sources

1.www.withhistory.com

2. encyclopedic dictionary of the historian-M.: Pedagogy-Press, 1999.

3. History of the Knights Templar, Marion Melville, "Eurasia", St. Petersburg 2000

4.www.northrp.net

Crusades

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on the history of the Middle Ages

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Streh Elena Vladimirovna

Introduction

1. Reasons for the Crusades

2. The beginning of the crusades

Subsequent crusades

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Crusades are usually called military expeditions of Western European Christians with the aim of recapturing and protecting the main Christian shrines in Palestine. Their participants sewed a cross on their cloaks - a symbol of Christianity. They received from the popes the forgiveness of all their sins. It was the Catholic Church, or rather the papacy, that was the organizer of the crusades. It is customary to count the time of the crusades from 1096 (the beginning of the first of them) and end in 1270 (the last, Eighth campaign) or 1291, when the Muslims took the last stronghold of the crusaders in the East - the fortress of Acre. After the first crusades in Palestine, the papacy began to use the crusading idea in the fight against heretics and even recalcitrant kings. Crusades were organized in the 14th and 15th centuries, in particular against the Turks, but these were separate episodes. The mass crusading movement existed precisely at the end of the 11th - the end of the 13th century.

The crusades were certainly religious wars of Christians against Muslims, but their causes and nature were much deeper.

The main religious slogan of the crusades, which the church proclaimed, was the liberation and protection of Christian shrines in Palestine, mainly the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The purpose of the First Crusade was also to help the Orthodox Christians of Byzantium, which suffered greatly from the attack of the Muslims and itself sought help. Of course, the papacy expected that such support from Western European co-religionists would help overcome the church schism and extend papal primacy to Eastern Christians.

1. Causes of the Crusades

The beginning of the crusades was laid by the popes, who were nominally considered the leaders of all enterprises of this kind. Popes and other masterminds of the movement have promised heavenly and earthly rewards to all those who put their lives in danger for a holy cause. The campaign to attract volunteers was especially successful due to the religious fervor that prevailed then in Europe. Whatever the personal motives for participating (and in many cases they played a significant role), the soldiers of Christ were confident that they were fighting for a just cause.

The immediate cause of the crusades was the growth in power of the power of the Seljuk Turks and their conquest in the 1070s of the Middle East and Asia Minor. Natives of Central Asia, at the beginning of the century, the Seljuks penetrated into the regions subject to the Arabs, where they were first used as mercenaries. Gradually, however, they became more and more independent, conquering Iran in the 1040s, and Baghdad in 1055.

Then the Seljuks began to expand the boundaries of their possessions to the west, leading an offensive mainly against the Byzantine Empire. The decisive defeat of the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 allowed the Seljuks to reach the shores of the Aegean Sea, conquer Syria and Palestine, and in 1078 (other dates are also indicated) take Jerusalem.

The threat from the Muslims forced the Byzantine emperor to turn to Western Christians for help. The fall of Jerusalem greatly disturbed the Christian world.

The conquests of the Seljuk Turks coincided with a general religious revival in Western Europe in the 10th-11th centuries, which was largely initiated by the activities of the Benedictine monastery of Cluny in Burgundy, founded in 910 by the Duke of Aquitaine, William the Pious. Thanks to the efforts of a number of abbots who persistently called for the purification of the church and the spiritual transformation of the Christian world, the abbey became a very influential force in the spiritual life of Europe.

At the same time in the XI century. increased the number of pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The “infidel Turk” was portrayed as a defiler of shrines, a pagan barbarian whose presence in the Holy Land is intolerable to God and man. In addition, the Seljuks created an immediate threat to the Christian Byzantine Empire.

To many kings and barons, the Middle East was a world of great opportunity. Lands, income, power and prestige - all this, they believed, would be a reward for the liberation of the Holy Land. In connection with the expansion of the practice of inheritance based on primogeniture, many younger sons of feudal lords, especially in northern France, could not count on participation in the division of their father's lands. Having taken part in the crusade, they could already hope to acquire the land and position in society that their older, more fortunate brothers possessed.

Crusades gave the peasants the opportunity to free themselves from lifelong serfdom. As servants and cooks, the peasants formed the convoy of the crusader troops.

For purely economic reasons, European cities were interested in the crusades. For several centuries, the Italian cities of Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice fought the Muslims for dominance over the western and central Mediterranean. By 1087 the Italians had ousted the Muslims from southern Italy and Sicily, established settlements in North Africa, and taken control of the western Mediterranean Sea. They undertook sea and land invasions of the Muslim territories of North Africa, forcibly seeking trade privileges from local residents. For these Italian cities, the crusades meant only the transfer of hostilities from the Western Mediterranean to the Eastern.

2. Beginning of the Crusades

The beginning of the crusades was proclaimed at the Clermont Cathedral in 1095 by Pope Urban II. He was one of the leaders of the Cluniac reform and devoted many meetings of the council to discussing the troubles and vices that hinder the church and the clergy. On November 26, when the council had already completed its work, Urban addressed a huge audience, probably numbering several thousand representatives of the highest nobility and clerics, and called for a war against the infidel Muslims in order to liberate the Holy Land. In his speech, the pope emphasized the sanctity of Jerusalem and the Christian relics of Palestine, spoke of the plunder and desecration to which they are subjected by the Turks, and outlined the picture of numerous attacks on pilgrims, and also mentioned the danger threatening Christian brothers in Byzantium. Then Urban II urged listeners to take up the holy cause, promising everyone who goes on a campaign, remission of sins, and everyone who lays down his head in it, a place in paradise. The pope urged the barons to stop the destructive civil strife and turn their ardor to a charitable cause. He made it clear that the crusade would provide the knights with ample opportunities to gain lands, wealth, power and glory - all at the expense of the Arabs and Turks, with whom the Christian army could easily be dealt with.

The response to the speech was the cries of the audience: "Deus vult!" ("God wants it!"). These words became the battle cry of the crusaders. Thousands of people immediately made a vow that they would go to war.

Pope Urban II ordered the clergy to spread his call throughout Western Europe. The archbishops and bishops (the most active among them was Ademar de Puy, who took over the spiritual and practical leadership of the preparation of the campaign) called on their parishioners to respond to it, and preachers like Peter the Hermit and Walter Golyak conveyed the words of the pope to the peasants. Often, the preachers aroused such religious fervor in the peasants that neither the owners nor the local priests could restrain them, they took off by the thousands and set off on the road without supplies and equipment, not having the slightest idea of ​​the distance and hardships of the path, in naive confidence, that God and the leaders will take care both that they do not go astray, and about their daily bread. These hordes marched across the Balkans to Constantinople, expecting their Christian brethren to show them hospitality as champions of the holy cause.

However, the locals met them coolly or even contemptuously, and then the western peasants began to rob. In many places, real battles were played out between the Byzantines and the hordes from the west. Those who managed to get to Constantinople were not at all welcome guests of the Byzantine emperor Alexei and his subjects. The city temporarily settled them outside the city limits, fed them and hastily transported them through the Bosphorus to Asia Minor, where the Turks soon dealt with them.

1st crusade (1096-1099). The 1st crusade itself began in 1096. Several feudal armies took part in it, each with its own commander in chief. Three main routes, by land and by sea, they arrived in Constantinople during 1096 and 1097. The campaign was led by feudal barons, including Duke Gottfried of Bouillon, Count Raymond of Toulouse and Prince Bohemond of Tarentum. Formally, they and their armies were subordinate to the papal legate, but in fact they ignored his instructions and acted independently.

Crusaders, moving overland, took away food and fodder from the local population, besieged and plundered several Byzantine cities, and repeatedly clashed with Byzantine troops. The presence in the capital and around it of a 30,000-strong army, demanding shelter and food, created difficulties for the emperor and the inhabitants of Constantinople. Violent conflicts broke out between the townspeople and the crusaders; at the same time, disagreements between the emperor and the commanders of the crusaders escalated.

Relations between the emperor and the knights continued to deteriorate as the Christians moved east. The Crusaders suspected that Byzantine guides were deliberately ambushing them. The army turned out to be completely unprepared for the sudden raids of the enemy cavalry, which managed to escape before the knightly heavy cavalry rushed in pursuit. The lack of food and water exacerbated the hardships of the campaign. Wells along the way were often poisoned by Muslims. Those who endured these most difficult trials were rewarded with the first victory, when Antioch was besieged and taken in June 1098. Here, according to some testimonies, one of the crusaders discovered a shrine - a spear with which a Roman soldier pierced the side of the crucified Christ. It is reported that this discovery greatly inspired the Christians and contributed in no small measure to their further victories. The fierce war lasted another year, and on July 15, 1099, after a siege that lasted a little over a month, the crusaders took Jerusalem and betrayed all of its population, Muslims and Jews, to the sword.

After long disputes, Gottfried of Bouillon was elected King of Jerusalem, who, however, unlike his not so modest and less religious successors, chose the unpretentious title of "defender of the Holy Sepulcher." Gottfried and his successors got to control the power, united only nominally. It consisted of four states: the county of Edessa, the principality of Antioch, the county of Tripoli and the kingdom of Jerusalem itself. The king of Jerusalem had relatively conditional rights over the other three, since their rulers had established themselves there even before him, so that they fulfilled their vassal oath to the king (if they did) only in the event of a military threat. Many sovereigns made friends with the Arabs and Byzantines, despite the fact that such a policy of theirs weakened the position of the kingdom as a whole. In addition, the power of the king was significantly limited by the church: since the crusades were carried out under the auspices of the church and nominally led by the papal legate, the highest clergyman in the Holy Land, the patriarch of Jerusalem, was an extremely influential figure here.

The population of the kingdom was very diverse. In addition to Jews, many other nations were present here: Arabs, Turks, Syrians, Armenians, Greeks, etc. Most of the crusaders were from England, Germany, France and Italy. Since there were more French, the Crusaders were collectively called Franks.

During this time, at least ten important centers of commerce and trade developed. Among them are Beirut, Acre, Sidon and Jaffa. In accordance with privileges or awards of authority, Italian merchants established their own administration in coastal cities. Usually they had their own consuls (heads of administration) and judges here, acquired their own coin and system of measures and weights. Their legislative codes extended to the local population.

As a rule, the Italians paid taxes on behalf of the townspeople to the Jerusalem king or his governors, but in everyday activities they enjoyed complete independence. Under the residences and warehouses of the Italians, special quarters were assigned, and near the city they planted gardens and orchards in order to have fresh fruits and vegetables. Like many knights, Italian merchants made friends with Muslims, of course, in order to get a profit. Some have even gone so far as to put sayings from the Qur'an on coins.

The backbone of the Crusader army was formed by two orders of chivalry - the Knights Templars (Templars) and the Knights of St. John (Johnites or Hospitallers). They included mainly the lower strata of the feudal nobility and the younger offspring of aristocratic families. Initially, these orders were created to protect temples, shrines, roads leading to them and pilgrims; it also provided for the establishment of hospitals and care for the sick and wounded. Since the orders of the Hospitallers and Templars set religious and charitable goals along with military ones, their members, along with the military oath, took monastic vows. The orders were able to replenish their ranks in Western Europe and receive financial assistance from those Christians who could not take part in the crusade, but were eager to help the holy cause.

Due to such contributions, the Templars in the 12-13 centuries. essentially turned into a powerful banking house that carried out financial intermediation between Jerusalem and Western Europe. They subsidized religious and commercial enterprises in the Holy Land and gave loans here to the feudal nobility and merchants in order to get them already in Europe.

3. Subsequent Crusades

2nd crusade (1147-1149). When in 1144 Edessa was captured by the Muslim ruler of Mosul Zengi and the news of this reached Western Europe, the head of the monastic order of the Cistercians, Bernard of Clairvaux, persuaded the German emperor Conrad III (ruled 1138-1152) and King Louis VII of France (ruled 1137-1180) to undertake a new crusade. This time, in 1145, Pope Eugene III issued a special bull on the crusades, in which there were precisely formulated provisions that guaranteed the protection of the church to the families of the crusaders and their property.

The forces that could be attracted to participate in the campaign were huge, but due to the lack of interaction and a well-thought-out campaign plan, the campaign ended in complete failure. Moreover, he gave reason to the Sicilian king Roger II to raid the Byzantine possessions in Greece and the islands of the Aegean.

3rd crusade (1187-1192). If the Christian commanders were constantly in contention, then the Muslims, under the leadership of Sultan Salah ad-Din, united in a state that stretched from Baghdad to Egypt. Salah ad-din easily defeated the divided Christians, in 1187 he took Jerusalem and established control over the entire Holy Land, with the exception of a few coastal cities.

The Third Crusade was led by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (reigned 1152-1190), French King Philip II Augustus (reigned 1180-1223) and English King Richard I the Lionheart (reigned 1189-1199). The German emperor drowned in Asia Minor while crossing a river, and only a few of his soldiers reached the Holy Land. Two other monarchs who competed in Europe took their strife to the Holy Land. Philip II Augustus, under the pretext of illness, returned to Europe to try, in the absence of Richard I, to take away the Duchy of Normandy from him.

Richard the Lionheart was left as the sole leader of the crusade. The feats he accomplished here gave rise to legends that surrounded his name with a halo of glory. Richard won Acre and Jaffa from the Muslims and concluded an agreement with Salah ad-Din on the unhindered admission of pilgrims to Jerusalem and to some other shrines, but he failed to achieve more. Jerusalem and the former Kingdom of Jerusalem remained under Muslim rule. The most significant and long-term achievement of Richard in this campaign was his conquest of Cyprus in 1191, where as a result an independent Cypriot kingdom arose, which lasted until 1489.

4th crusade (1202-1204). The 4th Crusade announced by Pope Innocent III was mainly French and Venetian. The ups and downs of this campaign are set out in the book of the French commander and historian Geoffroy Villardouin "The Conquest of Constantinople" - the first lengthy chronicle in French literature.

According to the initial agreement, the Venetians undertook to deliver the French crusaders by sea to the shores of the Holy Land and provide them with weapons and provisions. Of the expected 30 thousand French soldiers, only 12 thousand arrived in Venice, who, due to their small numbers, could not pay for the chartered ships and equipment. Then the Venetians offered the French that, as a payment, they would assist them in attacking the port city of Zadar in Dalmatia, subject to the Hungarian king, which was Venice's main rival in the Adriatic. The original plan - to use Egypt as a springboard to attack Palestine - was put on hold for the time being.

Having learned about the plans of the Venetians, the pope forbade the campaign, but the expedition took place and cost its participants excommunication. In November 1202, the combined army of the Venetians and the French attacked Zadar and thoroughly plundered it. After that, the Venetians suggested that the French once again deviate from the route and turn against Constantinople in order to restore the deposed Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos to the throne. A plausible pretext was also found: the crusaders could expect that in gratitude the emperor would give them money, people and equipment for an expedition to Egypt.

Ignoring the pope's ban, the crusaders arrived at the walls of Constantinople and returned the throne to Isaac. However, the question of paying the promised reward hung in the air, and after an uprising took place in Constantinople and the emperor and his son were deposed, hopes for compensation melted away. Then the crusaders captured Constantinople and plundered it for three days starting from April 13, 1204. The greatest cultural values ​​were destroyed, many Christian relics were plundered. In place of the Byzantine Empire, the Latin Empire was created, on the throne of which Count Baldwin IX of Flanders was seated.

The empire that existed until 1261 included only Thrace and Greece, of all the Byzantine lands, where the French knights received feudal inheritances as a reward. The Venetians, on the other hand, owned the harbor of Constantinople with the right to collect duties and achieved a trade monopoly within the Latin Empire and on the islands of the Aegean Sea. Thus, they benefited the most from the crusade, but its participants never reached the Holy Land.

The Pope tried to extract his own benefits from the current situation - he removed the excommunication from the crusaders and took the empire under his protection, hoping to strengthen the union of the Greek and Catholic churches, but this union turned out to be fragile, and the existence of the Latin Empire contributed to the deepening of the split.

The Children's Crusade (1212). Perhaps the most tragic of the attempts to return the Holy Land. The religious movement, which originated in France and Germany, involved thousands of peasant children who were convinced that their innocence and faith would accomplish what adults could not achieve by force of arms.

The religious fervor of teenagers was fueled by parents and parish priests. The pope and the higher clergy opposed the enterprise, but could not stop it. Several thousand French children (perhaps up to 30,000), led by the shepherdess Etienne of Cloix near Vendôme (Christ appeared to him and handed a letter to convey to the king), arrived in Marseille, where they were loaded onto ships.

Two ships sank during a storm in the Mediterranean, and the remaining five reached Egypt, where the shipowners sold the children into slavery. Thousands of German children (estimated to be up to 20,000), led by ten-year-old Nicholas from Cologne, made their way to Italy on foot. When crossing the Alps, two-thirds of the detachment died from hunger and cold, the rest reached Rome and Genoa. The authorities sent the children back, and almost all of them died on the way back.

There is another version of these events. According to her, French children and adults, led by Etienne, first arrived in Paris and asked King Philip II Augustus to equip a crusade, but the king managed to persuade them to go home. The German children, under the command of Nicholas, reached Mainz, here some were persuaded to return, but the most stubborn continued on their way to Italy. Some arrived in Venice, others in Genoa, and a small group reached Rome, where Pope Innocent released them from their vows. Some of the children showed up in Marseille. Be that as it may, most of the children disappeared without a trace. Perhaps in connection with these events, the famous legend of the Pied Piper from Hammeln arose in Germany.

The latest historical research calls into question both the scale of this campaign and its very fact in the version as it is usually presented. It is suggested that the "Children's Crusade" actually refers to the movement of the poor (serfs, laborers, day laborers) gathered in the crusade, who failed already in Italy.

5th crusade (1217-1221). At the 4th Lateran Council in 1215, Pope Innocent III announced a new crusade (sometimes it is considered as a continuation of the 4th campaign, and then the subsequent numbering shifts). The performance was scheduled for 1217, it was headed by the nominal king of Jerusalem, John of Brienne, the king of Hungary, Andrew (Endre) II, and others. the city of Damietta, located on the seashore.

The Egyptian sultan offered the Christians to cede Jerusalem in exchange for Damietta, but the papal legate Pelagius, who was waiting for the legendary Christian "King David" to approach from the east, did not agree to this. In 1221, the crusaders launched an unsuccessful assault on Cairo, fell into a difficult situation and were forced to surrender Damietta in exchange for an unhindered retreat.

6th crusade (1228-1229). This crusade, sometimes called "diplomatic", was led by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, grandson of Frederick Barbarossa. The king managed to avoid hostilities, through negotiations he (in exchange for a promise to support one of the parties in the inter-Muslim struggle) received Jerusalem and a strip of land from Jerusalem to Acre. In 1229 Frederick was crowned king in Jerusalem, but in 1244 the city was again conquered by the Muslims.

7th crusade (1248-1250). It was led by the French king Louis IX Saint. The military expedition undertaken against Egypt turned out to be a crushing defeat. The crusaders took Damietta, but on the way to Cairo they were utterly defeated, and Louis himself was captured and forced to pay a huge ransom for his release.

8th crusade (1270). Not heeding the warnings of advisers, Louis IX again went to war against the Arabs. This time he aimed at Tunisia in North Africa. The crusaders ended up in Africa at the hottest time of the year and survived the plague that killed the king himself (1270). With his death, this campaign ended, which became the last attempt of Christians to liberate the Holy Land.

Military expeditions of Christians to the Middle East ceased after the Muslims took Acre in 1291. However, in the Middle Ages, the concept of "crusade" was applied to various kinds of religious wars of Catholics against those whom they considered enemies of the true faith or the church that embodied this faith, in including the Reconquista - the seven-century-long reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims.

Conclusion

military expedition christian crusade

Although the crusades did not achieve their goal and, begun with general enthusiasm, ended in disaster and disappointment, they constituted an entire era in European history and had a serious impact on many aspects of European life.

Byzantine Empire.

Perhaps the crusades really delayed the Turkish conquest of Byzantium, but they could not prevent the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The Byzantine Empire was in decline for a long time. Its final death meant the appearance of the Turks on the European political scene. The sack of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 and the Venetian trade monopoly dealt the empire a mortal blow from which it could not recover even after its revival in 1261.

Trade

The biggest beneficiaries of the crusades were the merchants and artisans of the Italian cities, who provided the armies of the crusaders with equipment, provisions and transport. In addition, the Italian cities, especially Genoa, Pisa and Venice, were enriched by the trade monopoly in the Mediterranean countries.

Italian merchants established trade relations with the Middle East, from where they exported various luxury items - silks, spices, pearls, etc. to Western Europe. The demand for these goods brought super-profits and stimulated the search for new, shorter and safer routes to the East. Ultimately, these searches led to the discovery of America. The crusades also played an extremely important role in the emergence of the financial aristocracy and contributed to the development of capitalist relations in Italian cities.

Feudalism and the Church

Thousands of large feudal lords died in the crusades, in addition, many noble families went bankrupt under the burden of debts. All these losses ultimately contributed to the centralization of power in Western European countries and the weakening of the system of feudal relations.

turned out to be contradictory. If the first campaigns helped to strengthen the authority of the pope, who assumed the role of spiritual leader in the holy war against the Muslims, then the 4th crusade discredited the power of the pope even in the person of such an outstanding representative as Innocent III. Business interests often took precedence over religious considerations, forcing the crusaders to disregard papal prohibitions and enter into business and even friendly contacts with Muslims.

culture

It was once believed that it was the Crusades that brought Europe to the Renaissance, but now this assessment seems to be overstated by most historians. What they undoubtedly gave the man of the Middle Ages was a broader view of the world and a better understanding of its diversity.

The Crusades are widely reflected in literature. An uncountable number of poetic works were written about the exploits of the crusaders in the Middle Ages, mostly in Old French. Among them there are truly great works, such as, for example, the History of the Holy War (Estoire de la guerre sainte), describing the exploits of Richard the Lionheart, or the Song of Antioch (Le chanson d "Antioche), supposedly composed in Syria, dedicated to the 1st Crusade The new artistic material, born of the Crusades, penetrated the ancient legends as well, thus continuing the early medieval cycles about Charlemagne and King Arthur.

The Crusades also stimulated the development of historiography. Villardouin's conquest of Constantinople remains the most authoritative source for the study of the 4th Crusade. The best medieval work in the biography genre is considered by many to be the biography of King Louis IX, created by Jean de Joinville.

One of the most significant medieval chronicles was the book written in Latin by Archbishop William of Tyre, History of Acts in Overseas Lands (Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum), vividly and reliably recreating the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1144 to 1184 (the year of the author’s death).

Bibliography

1.The era of the Crusades. ? M., 1914.

2.Fences M. Crusades. ? M., 1956.

.History of the Middle Ages: textbook. Benefit. At 3 o'clock? Part 2. High Middle Ages. / V.A. Fedosik (and others); ed. V.A. Fedosika and I.O. Evtukhov. - Mn.: Ed. Center of BSU, 2008. - 327 p.

.Zaborov M. Historiography of the Crusades (XV-XIX centuries). ? M., 1971.

.Zaborov M. History of the Crusades in Documents and Materials. ? M., 1977.

.Fences M. Cross and sword. ? M., 1979.

.Mozheiko I.V. 1185 year. East-West. ? Moscow: Nauka, 1989. ? 524 p.: ill.

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