One of the contributing contextual factors that led to the first crusade was the advance of various Islamic people into European territory, leaving them with feelings of vulnerability. By the end of the 11th-century the forces of Islam had captured 2/3 of the Christian world. However, nothing was done against the powers of Islam for a very long time. It was not until Emperor Alexius asked Pope Urban II to help recover the Byzantine territory. Urban had considerable reasons to help Alexius, but one of the main reason as explain by Frankforter was as a strategy to persuade knights that honor required them to discipline themselves. This situation was convenient to both Alexius and Urban; there were a lot of Christian knights in Western Europe
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Confession and reconciliation evolve from being something that was hard to obtain to something a lot more accessible. For someone who was not a knight all one had to do to be free from the debt of sin was regret one’s sins with a contrite heart. As well as the atonement of the sin to the wrong party if possible. Atonement was the problem for knights as after living a life of killing others for their own well, it was hard to atone for the sin. So many knights believed they would end up in the purgatory. This was the place where people who had recon ciliated with a contrite heart but did not have time to repair the evil they had done while being alive ended up. The idea of a Crusade provided knights with an opportunity to make up for some of their sins and reduce their time in purgatory. It was the idea that fighting for loot and profits got one excommunicated, but fighting to protect society frees one from the debt of …show more content…
He acknowledges that the European knights have a lot of sins, but by partaking in the Crusade they can redeem some of their sins. At the same time, he is also encouraging people to fight for a purposeful cause and outside the holy land. As he says, “Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves” (Urban). By encouraging European knights to fight outside the holy land and not against their own people the Pope was creating a system to keep the knight population under
Confession and reconciliation evolve from being something that was hard to obtain to something a lot more accessible. For someone who was not a knight all one had to do to be free from the debt of sin was regret one’s sins with a contrite heart. As well as the atonement of the sin to the wrong party if possible. Atonement was the problem for knights as after living a life of killing others for their own well, it was hard to atone for the sin. So many knights believed they would end up in the purgatory. This was the place where people who had recon ciliated with a contrite heart but did not have time to repair the evil they had done while being alive ended up. The idea of a Crusade provided knights with an opportunity to make up for some of their sins and reduce their time in purgatory. It was the idea that fighting for loot and profits got one excommunicated, but fighting to protect society frees one from the debt of …show more content…
He acknowledges that the European knights have a lot of sins, but by partaking in the Crusade they can redeem some of their sins. At the same time, he is also encouraging people to fight for a purposeful cause and outside the holy land. As he says, “Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves” (Urban). By encouraging European knights to fight outside the holy land and not against their own people the Pope was creating a system to keep the knight population under