Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/325

 CHAPTER XIX THE CRUSADES: HERESY AND THE MENDICANT ORDERS I. THE FIRST CRUSADE 380. Fascination of the Crusades. Of all the events of the Middle Ages the most romantic are the Crusades, the adventurous expeditions to Palestine, undertaken with the hope of reclaiming the Holy Land from the infidel Turks. All through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries each generation beheld at least one great army of crusaders gathering from every part of the West and starting toward the Orient. Each year witnessed the departure of small bands of pilgrims or of solitary soldiers of the cross. For two hundred years there was a continuous stream of Euro- peans of every rank and station, kings and princes, powerful nobles, simple knights, common soldiers, monks, townspeople, and even peasants, from England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, making their way into Western Asia. 381. The Holy Land conquered first by the Arabs and then by the Turks. Syria had been overrun by the Arabs shortly after the death of Mohammed, and the Holy City of Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the infidels. The Arab, however, shared with the Christian the veneration for the places associated with the life of Christ and, in general, permitted the Christian pilgrims to worship unmolested. But with the coming of a new and ruder people, the Seljuk Turks, in the eleventh century, the pilgrims began to bring home news of great hardships. Moreover, the Eastern emperor was defeated by the Turks in 1071 and lost Asia Minor. Finding himself unequal to the task of repelling the Turks, the Eastern emperor Alexius appealed to the Pope, Urban II, for aid. 23?