OPENING STATEMENT: Although trade and economic prosperity were a few of the benefits the Christians reaped from

the
Crusades, they were not the driving forces that initiated the conquest. The threat of other religions, namely Islam, encroaching on
Christian beliefs was the principal factor that led to the series of wars known as the Crusades.

FACT 1: Pope Urban’s Speech mainly alludes to religious reasons and states, nor implies economic gain from engaging in war.
SOURCE: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2a.html

FACT 2: The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West's belated response to the Muslim
conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.

SOURCE:http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/thomasmadden.html
Dr. Thomas Madden is quickly becoming the foremost crusade historian in the United States. Serious students of
the crusades in the United States cannot progress far in their studies without becoming aware of his work. He is
currently serving as the Chair of the Saint Louis University History Department and is active with the Society for
the Study of the Crusades in the Latin East [SSCLE].

FACT 3: The spirit of religious reform that had led to the Investiture Controversy had been accompanied by an increase in popular
spirituality. People were no longer to accept their religion passively; many wanted to participate actively and to do something
positive in honor of their god.
SOURCE: http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/nelson/first_crusade.html

FACT 4: Churchmen generally recognized the new spirituality of the age and wished that there were some way that the Church
could build upon this and assume the moral leadership of Europe and the Europeans.

SOURCE: http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/nelson/first_crusade.html
FACT 5: The Church had split into eastern and western organizations in 1054, and the pope's wanted somehow to heal that split.
They were involved in the Investiture Controversy and were looking for allies, such as the still-prestigious eastern Roman emperor.

SOURCE: http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/nelson/first_crusade.html

FACT 6: Pilgrims returning from the Holy Land were bring home stories of the atrocities being committed by the Seljuk Turks,
masters of the Levant, against pilgrims, and of the way in which they were desecrating the places holy to Christians. This caused
great outrage, in part because the average western European was better acquainted with the Bible lands than any place other than
their own villages and towns. The Holy Land was the Christians "other home."

SOURCE: http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/nelson/first_crusade.html

FACT 7: The Turks were severely persecuting the Christians in the Middle East, even murdering them.
The Turks had taken over territory previously belonging to Christians, including Jerusalem and sites
which were considered holy
Christ commanded it

SOURCE: http://www.rationalchristianity.net/crusades.html

FACT 8: Just as the individual was capable of balancing varying motivations, so the crusading movement itself was not dictated by
any one party but was a true discourse in which the idea and image of the crusade was constantly recast and recreated in a dialogue
between various groups in their quest for differing goals.   This approach far better explains the full gamut of movements labelled
crusades, including those to the holy land, those against heretics and political enemies, and the multifarious crusades of the later
middle ages.

SOURCE: http://www.the-orb.net/media.html

FACT 9: Not only was there internal rivalry, but also, form the tenth and early eleventh centuries, the Moslem
world was shaken by progressive incursion of the Seluk Turks. These people, having become Sunnites,
brought to the Near East a vitality and fervour that were reminiscen to fthe earliest stages in the rise of Islam.
They were proud, warlike zealous and – more to the point– very successful.
Source: Ronal C. Finucane, Soldieers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War (St Martin’s Press, 1983)

FACT 10: …For later in the ninth century enterprising Moslems set up a bandits’ nest some fifty miles along
the coast from Nice, near Frejus, from which they terrorized the neighborhood, the Alpine passes and the
northern Italian seaports. There were robbers’ dens, but Frejus was particularly troublesome.

Source: Ronal C. Finucane, Soldieers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War (St Martin’s Press, 1983)

FACT 11: Also in the decades leading up to 1095, military conflicts with the Moslems accelerated and therby
intensified pre-existing attitudes.

Source: Ronal C. Finucane, Soldieers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War (St Martin’s Press, 1983)

FACT 12: Christian knights from France and elsewhere in W Europe were encouraged to attempt to regain
lost Spanish territory.

Source: Ronal C. Finucane, Soldieers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War (St Martin’s Press, 1983)

FACT 13: The growing east-west trade in relics played some part in awakening and sustaining interest in the
Holy places, but more important was the gradual development of the penitential pilgrimage.
Source: Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades

FACT 14: The crusade was a logical extension of the pilgrimage. It would have never occurred to anyone to
march out to conquer the Holy Land if men had not made pilgrimages there for century after century. The
constant steam of pilgrims inevitably nourished the idea that the Sepulchre of Christ ought to be in Christain
hands, not in oder to solve the practical difficulties,… but because gradually the knowledge that the Holy
Places… were possessed by heathens became more unbearable.

Source: Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades

FACT 15: It was the concept of a reward in the form of the crusading indulgence… The indulgence must, in
fact, be seen as a development of the Chruch’s earlier penitential descipline.

Source: Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades

CLOSING STATEMENT: