At the beginning once Pope Urban II announced plans for the First Crusade, peasants and knights alike rushed to embark on the journey to recapture the eastern lands taken and occupied by the Muslim armies. The church helped draw up such large commitment of people, it would tell those that participated in the war that they would result in God forgiving them of any sins committed before or during the Crusade. “This strongly attracted many knights looking to receive full penance without having to stop fighting.”(Mangual, 2016) The only problem preventing people from joining the crusade was that the soldiers had to supply themselves with weapons and other necessities, while also financing their journey across a continent. This cost was such a large burden that knights and other nobles joining the crusade would sell their lands and all personal goods, but in some cases, that did not provide enough money. Several them had to get loans as well. To help the crusaders on their journey, the church would supply wages to ease the burden of the cost of the travels. This aided to some extent, but most of the cost fell on the crusaders. This massive surge of land sell off by the crusaders leaving for Asia Minor, was one of the greatest contributing factors to the church's rise in power. It allowed the church to purchase land for a fraction of its worth and collect taxes from the …show more content…
The Crusades in total were a series of pointless defensive wars that accomplished nothing, However the Crusades had much larger over reaching effects throughout the world. Yes if you just look at the crusades from the goals that it wished to complete then you could say they all were failures other than the first crusade, but the crusade was able to introduce east and west to each other culture in a way that any other attempt to re christianize the holy lands would have such as sending thousands of knights to holy lands to re conquer them with the idea that they would return at some point. This movement of people to and from the holy land also brought with it new ideas unbeknown to either side. At the beginning of the crusades and during the first crusade Europeans were vastly out matched owning their victory to the disorganization of the Islamic, but after the crusades the Europeans were able to use the knowledge they had gained from the Islamic forces to become one of the most sophisticated areas in the world. While at the same time the crusades brought an increase of trade because of the need for items of Islamic culture by Europeans which increased trade by the seas between east and west. Because of the increasing use of ships for transport and the rapid advancements brought to