The Crusades - The Clash of Civilizations

The Crusades were military campaigns sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade in 1091 with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to the Holy Land leading to an intermittent 200-year struggle. Some of those involved at the time, like Bernard of Clairvaux, and many historians include other papal-sanctioned military campaigns such as the Albigensian Crusade, the Aragonese Crusade, the Reconquista, and the Northern Crusades for which there was varied religious, economic and political motivations. Following the fall of Acre, the last Christian stronghold in the region, in 1291, Roman Catholic Europe mounted no further coherent response. In part, Urban was seeking to reunite the Christian church under his leadership by providing Emperor Alexios I with military support. After centuries of competitive co-existence with the Arabs following the initial Muslim conquests the Byzantine Empire suffered a significant defeat to Turks in 1071 at Battle of Manzikert. The implication was the significant loss of the well watered, highly productive, coastal area of Anatolia and new competition from the westward migrating Turks.