The Crusades and The Magna Carta

​The Crusades and the Magna Carta

​●Crusade

●Saladin

●Richard the Lion-Hearted

●Inquisition

●Heretics

●Thomas Aquinas

●Urban II

●Reconquista

●Magna Carta

●Absolute monarchy

●Limited monarchy​

​To Reclaim the Holy Land…

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The Age of Faith inspired wars of conquest. In 1093, after a lopsided defeat to the Seljuk Turks at the battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus sent an appeal to Robert, Count of Flanders. The emperor asked for help against the Muslim Turks. They were threatening to conquer his capital, Constantinople:

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The Crusades had economic, social, and political goals as well as religious motives. Muslims controlled Palestine (the Holy Land) and threatened Constantinople. In addition, the pope wanted to reclaim Palestine and reunite Christendom, which had split into Eastern and Western branches in 1054.​

​Pope Urban’s call brought a tremendous  outpouring of religious feeling and support for the Crusade. According to the pope, those who died on Crusade were assured of a place in heaven. With red crosses sewn on tunics worn over their armor and the battle cry of “God wills it!” on their lips, knights and commoners were fired by religious zeal and became Crusaders.

Pope Urban II (papacy, 1088-1099) also read that letter. Shortly after this appeal, he issued a call for what he termed a “holy war,” or Crusade, to gain control of the Holy Land. Over the next 300 years, a number of such Crusades were launched.​

Multiple Choice

The Crusades can best be defined as a series of Holy Wars between the ______________ & ______________.

• Muslims and Jews

• Christians and Mongols

• Christians and Jews

• Muslims and Christians

​Pope Urban’s call brought a tremendous  outpouring of religious feeling and support for the Crusade. According to the pope, those who died on Crusade were assured of a place in heaven. With red crosses sewn on tunics worn over their armor and the battle cry of “God wills it!” on their lips, knights and commoners were fired by religious zeal and became Crusaders.

​After an unorganized and inauspicious start to the First Crusade, the Crusaders rallied, and by 1099, had managed to capture the city of Jerusalem. All in all, the Crusaders had won a narrow strip of land that stretched about 650 miles from Edessa in the north to Jerusalem in the south. 

​The newly conquered Crusaders’ states were extremely vulnerable to Muslim counterattack. In 1144, Edessa was reconquered by the Turks. The Second Crusade was organized to recapture the city. But its armies straggled home in defeat. In 1187, Europeans were shocked to learn that Jerusalem itself had fallen to a Kurdish warrior and Muslim leader Saladin.

Multiple Choice

What important religious area was captured during the first crusades in 1099?

• Jerusalem

• Constantinople

• Rome

• Florence

​The Third Crusade to recapture Jerusalem was led by three of Europe’s most powerful monarchs. They were Philip II (Augustus) of France, German emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), and the English king, Richard the Lion-Hearted. Philip argued with Richard and went home. Barbarossa drowned on the journey. So, Richard was left to lead the Crusaders in an attempt to regain the Holy Land from Saladin. Both Richard and Saladin were brilliant warriors. After many battles, the two agreed to a truce in 1192. Jerusalem remained under Muslim control. In return, Saladin promised that unarmed Christian pilgrims could freely visit the city’s holy places.

​In 1204, the Fourth Crusade to capture Jerusalem failed. The knights did not reach the Holy Land. Instead, they ended up looting the city of Constantinople. In the 1200s, four more Crusades to free the holy land were also unsuccessful. The religious spirit of the First Crusade faded, replaced by selfish desires for personal glory and wealth. As a result, the armies of Europe would not experience large-scale military success in the Middle East for nearly another 700 years.

Open Ended

Describe what happened between the three main leaders during the Third Crusades?

​In Spain, Muslims (called Moors) controlled most of the country until the 1100s. The Reconquista was a long effort by the Spanish to drive the Muslims out of Spain. In 1492, the last Muslim stronghold at Granada fell to the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish monarchs.

​To unify their country under Christianity and to increase their power, Isabella and Ferdinand made use of the Inquisition. This was a court held by the Church to suppress heresy. Heretics were people whose religious beliefs differed from the teachings of the Church.

​When King Richard the Lion-Heart died, his younger brother John took the throne. John ruled from 1199 to 1216. He failed as a military leader, earning the nickname John Softsword. John lost Normandy and all his lands in northern France to the French under Philip Augustus. This loss forced a confrontation with his own nobles.

Multiple Choice

What is a court held by the Church used to root out heresy?

• Tribunal

• Inquisition

• Reconquista

• Holy Order

​Some of John’s problems stemmed from his own personality. He demonstrated cruelty and greed. Eventually, his nobles revolted. They could no longer abide by King John’s abusive form of absolute monarchy--a form of monarchy in which the monarch holds supreme autocratic authority, principally not being restricted by written laws, legislature, or customs. On June 15, 1215, they forced John to agree to the most celebrated document in English history, the Magna Carta (Great Charter). This document, drawn up by English nobles and reluctantly approved by King John, guaranteed certain basic political rights. The nobles wanted to safeguard their own feudal rights and limit the king’s powers. This created the world’s first limited monarchy--a government in which a monarch agrees to share power with a representative body, like a parliament or congress, and abide by the laws and restrictions outlined in a standing written document; also known as a constitutional monarchy.

​In later years, however, English people of all classes argued that certain clauses in the Magna Carta applied to every citizen. Guaranteed rights included no taxation without representation, a jury trial, and the protection of the law. The Magna Carta guaranteed what are now considered basic legal rights both in England and in the United States.

​The spirit of equal representation seen in the Magna Carta dispels a lingering misconception that intellectual and social innovation was non existent in  the Middle Ages.

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Another myth is that the Church did not embrace philosophy. In the mid-1200s, the scholar Thomas Aquinas argued that the most basic religious truths could be proved by logical argument. Between 1267 and 1273, Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologicae. Aquinas’s great work, influenced by Aristotle, combined ancient Greek thought with the Christian thought of his time.

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