Reply #59: As an historian of the Crusades

[jobycom]

I can assure you that Pope Urban II did not preach the Crusades for religious reasons only, and most people who went had a lot of reasons for going.

The Roman Emperor in Byzantium was losing his lands to the Muslim nations conquering them, and he appealed to the west for assistance. Since at the time there were no powerful secular leaders to appeal to, and since the Pope claimed to rank over all secular leaders anyway, the Emperor asked Urban for assistance. Urban then preached his sermon at Clermont. He appealed to their sense of Christianity, but he also promised them land and wealth, and he told horror stories of Europeans who were tortured to death in the East, and called for their vengence.

The leaders of the First Crusade, both the early popular one and the slightly later more organized one, were landless nobles seeking their fortunes. They had been fighting each other. They saw greater potential in attacking Palestine, so they banded together and attacked.

Christianity was used by Urban and the other leaders in the same way that nationalism is used to day. If there had been no religion at all, the Crusades would have happened, but would have used another excuse. That's my point. Religion was the excuse used, but it didn't cause it.

More proof of that would be what the Crusaders did when they conquered Palestine. They immediately formed alliances with local Muslims against other Muslims. There were cases where the European Christians formed alliances with Muslims against Christians already living in Palestine. It was clearly not about religion, but power and money.