Why did the Crusades take long to start?

[johnnyt3000]

After the Muslims started their campaign, why did it take long for the Crusades to start?

 

[asia53]

Which campaign: there were seven major ones, and a multitude of minor ones?

It was a monumental undertaking, financially and spiritually. The Holy Land was not a jet ride away. It took months to get there, one out two men didn’t make it: starvation, sickness, or perils of the journey. Some nobles impoverished their families financing their campaign with their own money.

If you’d like to learn more, there’s an excellent book by Steven Weidenkopf, who dispels a lot of myths about the Crusades:

The Glory of the Crusades

 

[unstoppable_II]

Which campaign: there were seven major ones, and a multitude of minor ones?
…

It’s a fair question. There were 463 years between Mohammed’s death in 632 AD and the calling of the first Crusade in 1095. Does Weidenkopf address this time period?

 

[JerryZ]

The assault of islam into Christiandom did not start immediately after the death of Muhammad, first they had their own civil war between the brothers and their sister in law to settle.

As a result islam was split into the 2 major sects, sunni and shia.

Immediately after these events both factions started an aggressive expansion of the lands around by them.

Islam has always conducted conversion by sword, initially Christians and Jews were left alone as they considered them “people of the book”. However once they (islam) collided with the lands controlled by Christians they revised their doctrine and started fighting for control of their lands too.
It is interesting to know that in the beginning, when they had conquered the routes leading to Jerusalem (a customary city of peregrination), they started imposing tolls on the faithful making the trip. And when you consider that most Christians were not wealthy people, they went to Jerusalem for the same reasons modern Christian go there. To make a visible connection with their faith. retread the same steps taken by our Lord Jesus, etc.
Eventually they also started killing, plundering, raping the peregrines until they almost stopped the traffic of people to Jerusalem.
This plus the decline in military power of the Eastern Roman Empire acted as catalyst for the Popes to getting actively involved in calling out for the Crusades.

.

 

[tomarin]

After the Muslims started their campaign, why did it take long for the Crusades to start?

You’re assuming the First Crusade was a straightforward and obvious response to Muslim conquest of the Holy Land, whereas in reality it was an event that relied on a multitude of contingencies for it to occur.

 

[asia53]

It’s a fair question. There were 463 years between Mohammed’s death in 632 AD and the calling of the first Crusade in 1095. Does Weidenkopf address this time period?

Honestly, I can’t say. The book is in my TBR (to be read) pile.

Steven Weidenkopf lectures in a series (Epic: First 500 year history of the Catholic Church) produced by Ascension Press, I learned about the book, and three facts about the Crusades in the lectures.

Facts:

1. 
   *]Crusaders didn’t go on Crusade to get rich, in fact, it impoverished a lot of families.
   *]One out of two men never reached the Holy Land due to starvation, sickness, or perils of an arduous journey.
   *]Crusaders went for reparation for their sins; not all, but a good many went for this reason.

 

[John_Lazarus]

Which campaign: there were seven major ones, and a multitude of minor ones?

It was a monumental undertaking, financially and spiritually. The Holy Land was not a jet ride away. It took months to get there, one out two men didn’t make it: starvation, sickness, or perils of the journey. Some nobles impoverished their families financing their campaign with their own money.

Not only that, it would have taken a while for all the news to get to Europe. It’s not like you got Saladin on his twitter feed going “i can haz palestine? kthxbye #minenow” and then all the Christian kings doing a flashmob in Jerusalem.

 

[mdgspencer]

It’s good to hear an interesting question I have not heard before.
When the Moslems conquered the Near East and north Africa, the armies of the Byzantine Empire which ruled over the area were inefffectual (because of low morale?) and the Emperor was apathetic as the Moslims conquered these large areas. (This, actually, could be better understood by realizing that this parallels the listless response of the the political leaders of the West to the rise and expansion of ISIS.) And too the rest of Europe had undergone a period of growing political disorganization after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire never got it together, the Muslim Turks finally destroying it, and only after Europe in the west recovered from its political dissolution centuries later could the Christians try to take back the Holy Land after its conquest.

 

[dmar198]

After the Muslims started their campaign, why did it take long for the Crusades to start?

Do you mean to ask why there wasn’t Any Catholic military response, or do you mean specifically a military campaign with the characteristics of the Crusades? I ask because there were hundreds of pre-Crusade military reactions to Islamic campaigns. Many of them are very famous historically.

For example:

• The Reconquest of Spain started in about 718 A.D. when King Pelagius of Cordoba began fighting back against the Muslims in Spain.
• The Catholic commander Charles Martel famously stopped the Muslim advance into France at the Battle of Poitiers.
• Charlemagne famously marched into Spain and liberated many of its cities from Muslim control.
• The popes throughout the 700s and 800s called upon the Eastern and Western Roman Emperors to defend the Italian coast from Muslim invaders and pirates.
• Two famous battles against Muslim invaders in Italy were the Battle of Ostia (849 A.D.) and the Battle of Garigliano (915 A.D.). The pope in both cases gave the Catholic troops his blessing before sending them against the Muslim invaders.
• The Eastern Catholic Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas briefly liberated Antioch from Muslim control in the mid-900s.
• The Catholic King William the Conqueror liberated the island of Sicily from Muslim control during the mid-1000s.

All of the above were precursors to the Crusades. Catholics did a lot of military work against Muslims before the Crusades were called, but the Crusades were special because they were better organized, they had greater religious significance, they had greater success in uniting Europe culturally and religiously, they were more successful at recapturing lost sites of pilgrimage, and the fighters in those battles had a greater claim on the title of martyrdom. This fueled a more numerous response by Christian men who otherwise feared to die in battle.

Anyway, that’s my thinking. I hope it helps, and you can google the battles I mentioned for more info about them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It’s good to hear an interesting question I have not heard before.
When the Moslems conquered the Near East and north Africa, the armies of the Byzantine Empire which ruled over the area were inefffectual (because of low morale?) and the Emperor was apathetic as the Moslims conquered these large areas. (This, actually, could be better understood by realizing that this parallels the listless response of the the political leaders of the West to the rise and expansion of ISIS.) And too the rest of Europe had undergone a period of growing political disorganization after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire never got it together, the Muslim Turks finally destroying it, and only after Europe in the west recovered from its political dissolution centuries later could the Christians try to take back the Holy Land after its conquest.

My understanding is that the early Arab conquerers merely took over existing societies as rulers. They didn’t change much of anything except the party to whom taxes were to be paid. In many instances, the taxes were less under them than it had been under the Byzantines. Byzantium was, by the time of the Arab conquest, a long way from being “Roman”, let alone martial. It relied heavily on diplomacy and mercenaries for survival, and did both well. But it was not a martial state itself.

And we do need to remember the disarray in which western Europe existed prior to the First Crusade. Muslims still controlled Spain at the time of the First Crusade, and they were turned back in France at the Battle of Tours in 732. Europe could barely defend itself. The Viking era lasted from about the mid eighth Century until about the 10th. One remembers that Hrolf’s invasion and seizure of Normandy was in 918. The Norman invasion of Sicily was in 1061.

Of at least some importance was the development of military tactics in the late Middle Ages that made the Crusades possible. Most early military organizations in Europe were composed of foot soldiers, sometimes clad in chain mail, sometimes not, or light cavalry. They were fundamentally defensive. The development of the heavily armored knight on a very large horse, complete with stirrups, added greatly to the shock power of western fighting units. Mounted, well-trained knights could punch a hole through infantry or light cavalry, and the more numerous foot followed through. In the early Crusades, the Muslim armies had nothing like that, which is why rather smallish crusader armies were able to defeat considerably larger armies. Eventually, of course, sheer numbers prevailed.

Digressing just a bit, it’s interesting that a fair number of Arabs accepted Crusader rule and were sometimes allied with the Crusaders. Arabs didn’t like their Turkic rulers then much more than they like the prospect of Iranian rule now.