Postby James Dahl » Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:30 am
The spark of the Crusades was the presence of armies in Palestine due to all the fighting between the Fatimids and Seljuk Turks over Jerusalem, which changed hands several times.
Soldiers, especially back then, would rob travelers quite often, and Catholic pilgrims were robbed and murdered quite often in the decades leading up to the first Crusade. The Seljuks had been attacking the Roman Empire as well, and the Emperor of the Roman Empire had called for assistance from the Pope, who then asked the kings of and princes of Europe to help the Empire. The belief that the attacks on pilgrims was Muslim discrimination and that the Empire falling to the Seljuks would open all of Europe to invasion basically demonized Muslims and made them an immediate threat to Europe. The first Crusade literally involved all of Europe, warriors from as far away as Iceland participated.
It should also be noted that Europeans at the time were savage barbarians who loved war, and had only been monotheists for a relatively short time. A large number of the warriors who traveled to Jerusalem on the first Crusade, their ancestors had been eviscerating Catholic priests and sacrificing to Thor the god of Thunder only a few centuries previously.
