Positive and Negative Effects of the Crusades: Essay

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The Crusades were undoubtedly one of the most impactful wars that took place in the Medieval Ages between the people of Christian and Islamic faiths. The four hundred years of wars that occurred in three phases had shaken the entire European continent and simultaneously the world during the time period during which it occurred. Even though the Holy Wars were responsible for countless damage and suffering throughout the centuries, they also paved the pathway for social progression. The Crusades have actively affected various aspects of the social life of Europe, such as politics, arts and literature, the role and condition of women, and so on. Without the Holy Wars, the world today would have been much different from what it is now.

Effect on the Catholic Church

The Crusades, being a set of religious wars, impacted the Catholic Church the most. All the unrest and turmoil turned the general masses into God-fearing people, and more of them began to engage in church activities actively. As more people began to donate to the church in hopes of a better afterlife, the amount of wealth of the church began to increase, as well as the power of the papal sector. More often than not, the churches demanded high prices from the general masses for the service they provided and used the gullibility and piousness of the people to accumulate more and more financial additions. On top of that, thousands of Crusaders, on returning from the battlegrounds, looked for asylum in the churches and monasteries as their psyche was severely battered by the horrors they encountered in the wars. Many of them donated whatever wealth they had to the churches and dedicated their remaining lives to the service of God to get rid of their worldly sins. Along all of these, the churches were constantly receiving all kinds of monetary help and other benefits from the local masses in extraordinary amounts during that time. Thus, the churches had immense power and control over the population during the Medieval Ages.

However, it should be mentioned here that in the aftermath of the Crusades, the Muslim invasion was successful in destroying “the ancient organization of the Roman Church” (Partner, 1966, p.68). In the middle of the fifteenth century, the Crusaders faced a tremendous loss through the besiegement of the city of Constantinople, the capital city of the Roman Empire, at the hands of the Ottoman Army. This incident had a significant negative impact on the Pentarchy of the Orthodox Church, an ancient religious institution. This event led the four ancient cities of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Antioch to become devoid of adherents and devotees through the Islamization of the cities. As a result, the power of the Catholic churches shifted to the European continent.

Effect on Politics and Social Structure

Feudalism is an informal political system that was mostly practiced in the Middle Ages, most notably in the European continent. In feudal societies, as Marc Bloch defines, the king owned all the lands in his kingdom. However, the king would give some of the lands to the lords who fought under him. These lords became feudal lords and had power over the people who resided in the lands under them (1961). This is how feudal societies worked. It is informal in the sense that, in the written constitution, the king is said to own everything in his kingdom, despite the feudal aristocracy controlling the general masses in reality. The Holy Wars were successful in breaking down the feudal aristocracy’s system and thus altered the whole political system. Monarchy was re-established and the power was centralized to the king. The king, now, had direct control over the general population. He no longer had to rule through his lords. Moreover, many of the nobles, such as the knights and the barons, had to sell their properties to accumulate wealth to fund the expeditions for the Crusades. Furthermore, quite a lot of nobles who participated in the Crusades could not return, and due to lack of a proper heir, their properties were confiscated back to the Crown. As the feudal lords began to lose their power through both influence and number along with the adjacent increase of monarchical power, feudalism in medieval Europe saw its demise by the 1500s (Salmon, 1979).

Effect on Women

Women before the Crusades

In the early Medieval Ages, ranging from 476 to 1000 BC, women were mostly expected to be engaged in domestic activities, subordinate to their husbands, and participate in rearing their children. However as Christian monasticism was established, the church offered alternative roles for women to participate in. In this period of history, it is argued that men and women shared significant gender equality. For example, the leader of nuns or abbesses was able to rule monasteries that contained both men and women and could even own properties. Women mostly participated in work that could be done in their homes or near their residing places. Women supported their husbands with their business ventures, as most such work had to be done near their abodes, and according to some accounts, some of these women also owned their own businesses. Another popular sector women contributed to was spinning. As humans invented the technology of beer-making, women also took the role of brewers (Schaus, 2006, p.44). However, women’s health condition was generally poor as most of them died in childbirth and their life expectancy was at most twenty-five (Classen, 2007, p.128).

Women in the Crusades

Even though women were mostly active in domestic activities, there are records of them also participating in combat along with their male counterparts or when men fell in the war zones. Women who belonged to the nobility were also encouraged to be trained in combat and riding, indicating that they were expected to engage in combat if needed (Santosuosso, 2004, p.268). Women also acted as regents of their estates in the absence of lords and knights. Antonio Santosuosso further mentions how commoner women also contributed to the warfare through various substantial activities such as removing lice from soldiers’ heads or washing soldiers’ clothes. The only contribution allowed and approved by the Church for these ladies was to wash the clothes of the soldiers with the precondition that they should not be good-looking; since they feared that there might be a possibility for soldiers to be engaged in sexual relationships with women if they were beautiful (2004, p.268). Women would join men in their march towards the war zones, sometimes to sell provisions to the armies or sometimes as their servants. Some of them would also act as prostitutes for them. Some nuns would also accompany monks and priests on their journey to help provide religious services to the soldiers. Most of the time, women were overlooked in victories but blamed for the defeat in the wars. This indicates that society considers women to be subordinate to men and can be treated as per men’s wishes. In addition to that, it also signifies how sexism and misogyny were active against women, in contrast to the condition of women in the pre-Crusades era. Much information about the role of women in the Crusades is not found in the chronicles of Western historians. Anna Comnena, a Byzantine princess, initiated writing down women’s participation in the Holy Wars. On the other hand, despite having the possibility of being overly exaggerated, the information about Christian women in the Crusades is mostly found in the accounts of the Muslim invaders.

Women after the Crusades

Women seemingly had to suffer the most in the era that followed the Crusades since most of them lacked the proper skills to get a job or barely had any other financial support. Women began to encounter more restrictions on their work in the early 16th century, and guilds began to become more patriarchal or male-dominated. Women also began to see a reduction in property ownership (Erler and Kowaleski, 2003). As a result, a rise in prostitution took place following the years of the Holy Wars. As the profession of sex worker was not only illegal but also frowned upon socially, sex workers barely had any legal rights or support in their work field. As a result, these sex workers became vulnerable to rapists, thieves, robbers, and even murderers and could not take legal steps against their perpetrators. Along with prostitution, other immoral acts such as adultery, polygamy, and other forms of oppression of women began to increase, which became a huge problem for both the state and the church. Women were considered to be the property of their husbands and were expected to remain with their husbands even if they were brutal towards them. Women had no divorce laws. Westerkamp states how women were burned at the stake if they committed adultery or murdered their husbands, even if the husband tortured her (2015, p.5). This shows that wives in that era barely had any agency over their husbands, which is the opposite scenario of the condition of women in the pre-Crusades era.

Effect on Art and Literature

The Crusades enabled both Islamic and Byzantine art to be assimilated into each society. Both parties borrowed some form of art and literature from the opposition party. As a result, a new art form called ‘Crusader Art’ emerged during the Holy Wars. It is described as the art that was created in parts of the Middle East that were under the control of the Crusaders and incorporated Gothic and Romanesque styles. Even though the Crusaders themselves were not much interested in artwork, the little contribution they had either got destroyed with their defeat or were lost. However, their architecture, especially Byzantine castles, can be the most notable artistic contribution. The influence of this new art can be found in illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, mosaics, panel paintings, frescoes, etc.

Contribution to Popular Culture

Even though the Сrusaders merely focused on art and literature at the time of the Holy Wars, this eventful era has been referenced in modern artworks since then. One of the most important and significant pieces of literature from the Middle Ages is ‘The Canterbury Tales’, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th century, which drew inspiration heavily from the whole Crusading Movement (Carlson, 2004). It is a collection of many stories that parodied real-life nobilities and introduced many ethical and moral dilemmas. Chaucer’s work helped popularize the vernacular form of English and influenced his contemporaries as well. Other, more modern pieces of literature that were influenced by the conditions of Western Europe during the Medieval Ages are the ballads of Robin Hood and the novel ‘Ivanhoe’ by Sir Walter Scott. More contemporary forms of artwork that are influenced by the Crusades can be seen in various soap operas, video games, films, etc. A very popular video game called ‘Assassin’s Creed’ showcases the struggles between the Assassins and the Templars in the Middle Ages.

Effect on Philosophy

Sickened by the terrible socio-economic conditions in the aftermath of the Crusades, people began to challenge their existing ideologies and philosophies. As a result, new ideas such as the Renaissance in the 17th century and Enlightenment in the 18th century were formulated and each of them depicted a new philosophical approach to life. The Renaissance, which took place between the 14th and 17th centuries, is considered to be a transitional period from the Middle Ages to modernity. It was followed by the Age of Enlightenment, which made many modern and notable contributions in the fields of physics, biology, medicine, and so on (Roberson, 2016, p.246). Some historians consider that ‘Principia Mathematica’, written by Sir Isaac Newton, may be the first influential work of the Age of Enlightenment. In the Dark Ages, the livelihood of the general masses was formed with the main focus on the afterlife. But the Age of Reason valued reason and logic over blind faith. As a result, many of the misconceptions and superstitions of previous ages began to fade through the skepticism of existing traditions (Foucault, 1977). This new practice of questioning traditional beliefs gave rise to secularism, which is still practiced today in most of the developed countries and is slowly spreading all over the world.

Conclusion

Like every war and transgression, the Crusades had its fair share of both positive and negative impacts on society. On one hand, it changed the entire political system of the early Middle Ages and centralized power into the hands of the king again, while on the other hand, it reduced the power women had in society and made their lives miserable. Furthermore, it destroyed the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church and diminished their atrocities by allowing new philosophies and worldviews like secularism to exist. The Crusades displayed what atrocities a man can commit under the influence of blind faith in unreasonable beliefs. Therefore, despite being an era of toil and pain, it is undeniable that the Crusades had a major role in shaping the modern world we have today.

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