This episode of CS is part 3 of our series on The Crusades.A major result of the First Crusade was a further alienation of the Eastern and Western Churches. The help provided Byzantium by the crusaders were not what The Eastern Emperor Alexius was hoping for.It also resulted in an even greater alienation of the Muslims than had been in place before. 200 years of crusading rampages across the Eastern Mediterranean permanently poisoned Muslim-Christian relations and ended the spirit of moderate tolerance for Christians living under Muslim rule across a wide swath of territory. The only people who welcomed the Crusaders were a handful of Christian minorities who’d suffered under Byzantine and Muslim rule; the Armenians and Maronites living in Lebanon. The Copts in Egypt saw the Crusades as a calamity. They were now suspected by Muslims of holding Western sympathies while being treated as schismatics by the Western Church. Once the Crusaders took Jerusalem, they banned Copts from making pilgrimage there.Things really went sour between East and West when the Roman church installed Latin patriarchates in historically Eastern centers at Antioch and Jerusalem. Then, during the 4^th Crusade, a Latin patriarch was appointed to the church in Constantinople itself.To give you an idea of what this would have felt like to the Christian of Constantinople; imagine how Southern Baptists would feel if a Mormon bishop was installed as the President of the Southern Baptist Convention. You get the picture = No Bueno.Another long-lasting effect of the Crusades was that they weakened the Byzantine Empire and hastened its fall to the Ottoman Turks a couple centuries later. Arab governments were also destabilized leaving them susceptible to invasion by Turks and Mongols.A significant new development in monastic history was made at this time in the rise of the knightly monastic orders. The first of these was the Knights Templar, founded in 1118 under Hugh de Payens. King Baldwin gave the Templars their name, and from them the idea of fighting for the Temple passed to other orders. Bernard of Clairvaux, although not the author of the Templar rule, as legend has it, did write an influential piece called In Praise of the New Militia of Christ which lauded the new orders of knights.The Templars were imitated by the Hospitallers, who had an earlier origin as a charitable order. They’d organized in 1050 by merchants from Amalfi living in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims. They provided hospitality and care of the sick, and helped morph the word “hospitality” into “hospital.” Under Gerard in 1120, the Hospitallers gained papal sanction. Gerard’s successor was Raymond de Provence who reorganized the Hospitallers as a military order on the pattern of the Knights Templar. The Hospitallers, also known as the Knights of St. John eventually moved to the islands of Rhodes, then Malta, where they held out in 1565 in a protracted siege against the Turks in one of history’s most significant battles.Another important military order, the Teutonic Knights arose in 1199, during the 3^rd Crusade.The knightly monastic orders had certain features in common. They viewed warfare as a devotional way of life. The old monastic idea of fighting demons, as seen in the ancient Egyptian desert hermits, evolved into actual combat with people cast as agents of evil. Spiritual warfare became actual battle. Knights and their attendants took the vows similar to other monks. They professed poverty, chastity, and obedience, along with a pledge to defend others by force of arms. While personal poverty was vowed, using violence to secure wealth was deemed proper so it could be used to benefit others, including the order itself. The Templars became an object of envy for their immense wealth.In studying the relations between Christianity and Islam during the Middle Ages, we should remember there were many peaceful interchanges. Some Christians advocated peaceful missions to Muslims. These peaceful encounters can be seen in the exchange of art. Christians highly valued Muslim metalwork and textiles. Church vestments were often made by Muslim weavers. Such a vestment is located today at Canterbury. It contains Arabic script saying, “Great is Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”On the positive side, if there was anything positive to be gleaned from the Crusades, it did promote a greater sense of unity in Western Europe. Remember that one of the reasons Pope Urban sparked the Crusade was to vent the violent habits of the European nobles who were constantly at each other’s throats. Instead of warring with each other back and forth across Europe, watering its fields with blood, they united to go against infidels “way over there.”The Crusades also led to increased prestige for the papacy as they were able to mobilize huge numbers of people. The Crusades also stimulated an intellectual revival in Europe as Crusaders returned with new experiences and knowledge from another part of the world.After the 1^st Crusade, over the next 60 years, Jerusalem saw a succession of weak rulers while the Muslims from Damascus to Egypt united under a new dynasty of competent and charismatic leaders. The last of these was Saladin, or, more properly, Salah ad-Din. Founder of the Ayyubid dynasty of Islam, he became caliph in 1174 and set out to retake Jerusalem.The king of Jerusalem at the time was (and warning: I’m going to butcher this poor guy’s name) Guy de Lusignan. Let’s just call him “Guy.” He led the Crusaders out to a hill on the West of the Sea of Galilee called the Horns of Hattin. Both the Templars and Hospitallers were there in force, and the much vaunted “true cross” was carried by the bishop of Acre, who himself was clad in armor. On July 5, 1187, the decisive battle was fought. The Crusaders were completely routed. 30,000 perished. King Guy, the leaders of the Templars and Hospitallers along with a few other nobles were taken prisoner. Saladin gave them clemency. The fate of the Holy Land was decided.On Oct. 2, 1187, Saladin entered Jerusalem after it made brave resistance. The generous conditions of surrender were mostly creditable to the chivalry of the Muslim commander. There were no scenes of savage butchery as followed the entry of the Crusaders 90 years before. The people of Jerusalem were given their liberty if they paid a ransom. Europeans and anyone else who wanted to, were allowed to leave. For 40 days the procession of the departing continued. Relics stored in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher were redeemed for the sum of 50,000 bezants. Named after Byzantium where they were the medium of exchange, the bezant was a gold coin of 5 grams.Thus ended the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Since then the worship of Islam has continued on Mount Moriah without interruption. The other European conquests of the 1^st Crusade were then in danger from the unending feuds of the Crusaders themselves, and, in spite of the constant flow of recruits and treasure from Europe, they fell easily before Saladin.He allowed a merely ceremonial Latin ruler to hold the title King of Jerusalem but the last real king was Guy, who was released, then travelled around claiming the title of king but without a court or capital. He eventually settled in Cyprus.We’ll go into less detail for the rest of the Crusades as we finish them off over the next episode .The 2^nd Crusade was sparked by 2 events; the Fall of the Crusader state of Edessa in Syria and the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux. And note that the 2^nd Crusade took place BEFORE the arrival of Saladin on the scene.Edessa fell to the Turks in Dec., 1144. They built a fire in a large breach they’d made in the city wall. The fire was so hot it cracked a section of the wall a hundred yards long. When the wall collapsed, the Turks rushed in and unleashed the same kind of brutality the Crusaders had when they conquered Jerusalem.Pope Eugenius III saw the Turk victory at Edessa as a threat to the continuance of the Crusaders in Palestine and called upon the king of France to march to their relief. The forgiveness of all sins and immediate entrance into heaven were promised to all embarking on a new Crusade. Eugenius summoned Bernard of Clairvaux to leave his abbey and preach the crusade. Bernard was the most famous person of his time and this call by the Pope came at the zenith of his fame. He regarded the Pope’s summons as a call from God.On Easter in 1146, King Louis of France vowed to lead the Crusade. The Pope’s promise of the remission of sins was dear to him as he was stricken with guilt for having burned a church with 1300 inside. How grand to be able to gain forgiveness by killing more! He assembled a council at Vézelai at which B...