In the 11th century, “the divine-rebuking wrath of god was awakened against all the Christian peoples” by the Turkish Seljuks who had “devastated everything almost to the walls of Constantinople” . Seljuk decimation of Christian people and their occupation of the Christian Holy Land prompted Pope Urban II to initiate the Crusading movement before the turn of the century. Initially, the primary goal of crusading was to recapture the Holy Land of Jerusalem in the name of God, and drive back the Seljuk conquerors. Over time, as crusading proved itself to be an effective means of conquest, the motivations behind crusading shifted from recapturing the Holy Land and achieving salvation to acquiring wealth and status. Examining the change in crusading…show more content… The message of the First Crusade as advertised by Pope Urban II read, “I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds…to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends…Christ commands it.” Pope Urban II makes it painfully clear to Christians that the Muslim Saracens are enemies of God and that their Christian brethren are in desperate need of assistance against their violent conquest. Urban declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095, and commands Christendom faithful to “go against the infidels and end with victory this war,” but actually getting Christians to take up the cross is easier said than done. When Pope Gregory VII called on European Christians to aid the Christian Greeks, his plea went largely unanswered because it failed to incentivize the audience. 2 Gregory mistakenly assumed that aiding other Christians would be enough to compel the eastern Europeans to take up arms. Crusading is expensive and dangerous, a huge deterrent for many Christians. Pope Urban II perhaps realized this crucial mistake and offered this as incentive to those who would take up the cross: “All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the Pagans, shall have
