The Crusades were created by a need for salvation. When Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos first called to the West for help in AD 1095, Muslims had conquered ⅔ of the Christian world and it was clear they weren’t going to stop. Soon they would have all of Europe if something wasn’t done. Crusaders gave up their entire lives knowing they’d spend all of their money on travel and survival, knowing they were no match for the Muslims and most of them would probably die in battle.
They began to worry about getting into heaven. In the Catholic religion, which used to be all of Christianity, heaven was a place of perfection, you couldn’t get in unless you were perfect enough to qualify as heaven’s inhabitants. So, Catholics began the concept of indulgences. Indulgences were part of the way to properly get into heaven and gave the crusaders battlefield hope.
One could confess their sins and be forgiven in the Lord’s eyes, but the sin they confessed to still had consequences, damage was still done, potentially to other people. Indulgences were earthly good-doings to make yourself perfect again, so as to get to heaven. This also created a new Catholic concept, purgatory. This occurred between AD 1160 and 1180, when 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘶𝘮 started to be used as a noun, or a place, rather than simply a transitional state of afterlife purification.
Purgatory was seen as a way for souls who were forgiven, who God wanted in heaven, to have a place where they could perform their indulgence to make ready for heaven. This is part of what made crusaders willing to go on a crusade. Some used crusades as their indulgence. The rest were confident, if they sinned before they could redeem themselves, only to die for God’s purpose on the battlefield, they’d still make it to heaven.
Crusaders gave up everything to try to save the holy land, retrieving it from the Muslims. This was a lost cause, and most were sure of it, including those fighting, but if they didn’t act at all, perhaps Christianity would be lost, good people be killed, or sold. If it weren’t for the Crusades, all of Western Civilization as we know it would be entirely different, perhaps Muslim people would have won entirely, rather than having been stopped during their conquest. since the scientific and economic advancement that brought the modern world came largely from Western Civilization, our world today might conceivably be less advanced, with more poverty and tyranny. We will never know how much better off we are because a few Christian people rallied Europe and sacrificed everything they knew for religion and their homes.
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