The Crusade

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With every city captured, the beleaguered Christians inside and outside these settlements would rejoice over their victory, as if no one group had done more to assure victory than the other. The Crusade having been jump-started by humble peasant forces set the tone for following soldiers, there was no greater reward than the salvation of the soul, noble and peasant alike would fight side-by-side to secure that goal. Compare this also with a chivalric tendency to identify wholly with one’s “brothers-in-arms”. . Lynn Hunt states the origin of universal human rights as Western, after all.24 The moral baseline by which these medieval Europeans, and more importantly to them, Christians, hints at a more developed understanding of human rights.Chivalry …show more content…
This conflict between what Europeans thought was acceptable, and the direct order by the Pope to wholly pursue the capture of the Holy Land by whatever means necessary, became the core internal confusion for many Crusaders.
Understanding the context of chivalry as a uniquely European social guideline, one can grasp why exactly it was that Christians and the Muslims of the East came to such fierce conflict. Many contemporaries label the Crusade as a terrible show of force between two religions, misled and convinced the other was corrupt and unworthy of control over the Holy Land. This assumption is founded in the language and rhetoric of the Crusade: the grave treatment of groups like the Turks as separate from Europe, and thus …show more content…
However, there is a lesson to be learned from the Crusade by examining the way it was conducted. The Church gave the populations of Europe a catalyst in the form of news that the Holy Land was under attack, corrupted by Turkish aggressors into a place where Christian pilgrims found themselves not only rejected, but outright persecuted. Chivalry demanded retribution for this loss, and the Church’s marriage to chivalry made it all the easier to encourage the raising of armies that would be wrapped not only in the identity of their respective kingdoms, but in the real assembly of a “Christian” army. The devaluation of national identity, and the subsequent strengthening of a more profoundly broad religious one, drove diverse class groups together, the shattering of economic status proved to be another component of the Crusade through the lens of chivalry and human rights. Far away from their homes and cultures, these Christian forces battled under harsh conditions, attributing their victories to God, and the unwavering resolve of their fellow warriors. The soldiery of Christendom had begun to split and spread throughout the East, coming into increasing contact with the remarkably similar Eastern
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