1. Cathedrals and the Crusades
14.1

2. Cathedrals
• From the Greek καθέδρα – seat – indicating the
building is the seat of the resident bishop or archbishop
• The grand churches of Europe.
• Often very large, very ornate, very beautiful, and very
amazing.
• Meant to reflect the glory of God and inspire awe in
the observer
• Usually funded by wealthy merchants and nobles who
wanted to leave their mark and maybe improve their
chances with God.

3. • The two big innovations were ribbed vaults and flying
buttresses.
• Vaults
• A vault is the arched shaped that helps hold up the
roof. The Romanesque cathedrals used barrel
vaults. These were simple arch-type structures.

4. • The ribbed vault provides what literally looks like a
rib. This is more efficient and does a better job of
distributing the weight to the wall.

5. • Here’s a comparison of the barrel vault of the
Romanesque Saint-Sernin Cathedral in Toulouse
with the ribbed vault of the Gothic Amiens Cathedral

6. • Flying buttress
• The flying buttress was an external structure – a bit
like an external half-arch. The weight of the roof
and walls was distribute outwards to these
buttresses. This took the weight-bearing
responsibility away from the walls themselves and
allowed for the big open spaces for windows.

8. • Here’s the difference it makes to the interior lighting:

10. • And finally, here’s a comparison of the exteriors.

15. Here are other examples of Romanesque styles.

16. • Now, Gothic:

18. • Cathedrals were usually oriented along an east-west
axis. The main entrance was on the west end while the
liturgical stuff (altar, bishop’s throne, etc.) was located
in the east end. They had the shape of a Latin cross.
Narthex Apse
Nave Choir

19. • Here’s an assortment of pictures of the most well-
known Gothic cathedral: Notre Dame de Paris

29. The Crusades!
• 200 years
• A “Holy War”
• First called for by Pope Urban II
• *Goal* Use the military to recover
Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the
Muslim Turks

30. Motives/Reasons for the Crusades
• Economic $$$
– Knights (Crusaders) could gain land, wealth,
and position in society (if he survived)
– Merchants loaned $ to finance Crusades and
made profits from the interest
– Victory meant control over new trade routes

31. Motives/Reasons for Crusades
• Spiritual
– Crusaders were promised a place in Heaven if
they died in battle
– Belief in the Christian cause!
• Also a way to get rid of knights who had
nothing better to do and often fought with
one another (foreign invasions had pretty
much stopped by this time).

32. “’The bearer of this ticket will go to heaven if you get
slaughtered on a Crusade!’ Awesome! I’m gonna be a
knight!”

33. First Crusade (1096-1099)
• Was a complete disorganized mess.
• Crusaders-Mostly French-Also German, Scottish,
English, Spanish
• There was also no centralized leadership, no organized
supply chain (they thought host cities, like
Constantinople would give them food or sell it at
reasonable prices – the cities thought otherwise), and
several different large groups of Crusaders.
• Eventually capture Jerusalem

34. • Eventually the Crusaders (less than a fourth of the
original number) get to Antioch (the first Christian city
in Palestine) and then Jerusalem. They lay siege to
both and take the cities.
• The siege wasn’t healthy for them either. Many
soldiers died during the siege. There wasn’t a lot of
food or water the city, especially since the besieged
had poisoned wells outside the city walls.
• The knights enter the city and proceed to kill nearly
everyone in it. Men, women, children, Muslim,
Jew, eastern orthodox Christian.

36. • One of the Crusader leaders said:
• Now that our men had possession of the walls and
towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our
men (and this was merciful) cut off the heads of their
enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell
from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting
them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were
to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to
pick one's way over the bodies of men and horses. But
these were small matters compared with what happened
in the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious
services are normally chanted. What happened there? If I
tell the truth, you would not believe it. Suffice to say
that, in the Temple and Porch of Solomon, men rode in
blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a
just and splendid judgment of God that this place should
be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had
suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was
filled with corpses and blood.

37. • Some Crusaders cut open the stomachs of the Muslims
because they were told they had swallowed their gold.
They even kept watch over the burning body piles,
waiting for the molten gold to stream out.
• The massacre was as much policy as bloodthirstiness.
• In the Crusaders’ minds, the city had to be purged
of all pagan and heretical influences and recreated
as a Latin Christian city.
• As far as the Crusaders were concerned, “Deus
vult,” – “God wills it.”

38. Not
really
!
Deus vult!!

39. • The aftermath is that the Crusaders succeed in
capturing and controlling a strip of land along the
Mediterranean in Palestine. They divide it up into four
separate feudal kingdoms.

40. Second Crusade (1147-1149) Goal: Recapture Edessa
• Unfortunately for the Crusaders, they were surrounded
on every side but the sea by hostile forces.
• The Turks conquer the Crusader city of Edessa and the
second Crusade is launched in 1144.
• Crusaders defeated!
• 1187-Jerusalem falls to the Muslims under SALADIN

41. Third Crusade (1189-1191)
• Jerusalem is captured in 1187 by the Muslim leader
Saladin.
• As inaccurately depicted in Kingdom of Heaven. The
political intrigue was different and far more
complicated, and Saladin didn’t just let all the
Christians leave the city.
• He was actually quite content to kill ‘em all, but
Balian (Orlando Bloom’s character, who was
actually considerably older than Orlando at the
time) threatened to kill all 3,000 to 5,000
Muslims in the city and destroy all Islam’s holy
places unless quarter was given. The
compromise was that anybody who could pay the
ransom could go. The 7,000 to 8,000 people who
couldn’t were put into slavery.

42. Ummm…. There’s nobody home! You might as
well leave! Bye bye now and thanks for the
siege.
Come on out!

43. • So a new Crusade is launched to retake Jerusalem and
the holy land.
• This time, it’s led by King Phillip of France, King Richard
the Lionhearted of England, and HREmperor Frederick I
(Barbarossa).

44. • Frederick’s army was massive. So big it had to go
through Asia Minor instead of by sea.
• The Byzantine emperor made a side deal with
Saladin to impede Fred’s progress in exchange for
safety of Byzantine’s lands.
• Fred drowns crossing a river, his army falls into
disorder, fares poorly against the Muslim armies,
and then a lot of them die from the plague while
encamped in Antioch.
• As for Richard and Philip, they squabble over spoils,
honor, who should rule the holy land, and over
European power politics. So Philip took his ball and
went home, leaving Richard to fight.

45. • Richard does rather well and he and Saladin go back
and forth (with the usual atrocities on both sides, of
course).
• Eventually, Richard and Saladin agree to terms that
Jerusalem will remain under Muslim control but that
unarmed Christian pilgrims will still be able to visit.
• Saladin (Salah al-Din) was well-respected by the
Europeans both for his honor and his war skills. They
thought him chivalrous.
• Side-note: Saddam Hussein thought of himself as a
new Saladin, i.e. protector of Islam and the Middle-
East. Ironically, though, Saladin was Kurdish, a
people who Hussein oppressed during his tyranny.

47. Fourth Crusade (1198-1204)
• Gets underway in 1198 and was poorly organized and
financed.
• Due to European and Byzantine politics as well as the
actions of the Italian merchants, the Crusaders wind up
sacking Constantinople in 1204. They never even got
to the holy land.
• It was the call for help from the Byzantines in 1093
that helped spur the Crusades and it wound up
biting them in the Byzantine butt 111 years later.
• RESULTS-A split between the Church in the east and
the Church in the west-remains permanent!
There were other minor Crusades that didn’t accomplish
much and/or were complete fiascos.

48. Reconquista Crusade
• The retaking of Spain by Christians.
• The Iberian Peninsula was conquered by the Muslims
around 711 and had all of it had been under their
control from the to the 1100’s when it started being
taken back.
• The reconquering was completed in 1492 when the last
Muslim outpost in the south was overrun and expelled
by the combined forces of King Ferdinand of Aragon
and Queen Isabella of Castile (the same ones who send
Christopher Columbus on his way).

49. • A feature of the Reconquista was the Spanish
Inquisition
• There was a general Inquisition movement in
Europe, but the Spanish version was especially ugly.
• It was motivated by anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim
feelings.
• The goal was to search out fake Christians, i.e. those
who had converted but weren’t sincere.
• People were given a grace period to come forward
and confess. If they did, they had to implicate
others. The others would be imprisoned, property
confiscated and put on trial. They would be tortured
for a confession. If confessing, they could be
released, punished, or burnt at the stake.

50. • The estimates of the executed range anywhere from
2,000 to 35,000.
• It winds up being a secret police fear weapon since
anybody could anonymously accuse anyone else.
Things got ugly.

55. Crusade aftermath
• All this interaction with the Muslims brought back some
technology and mathematics, e.g. algebra, they had
lacked.
• Opened up trade routes with the east (money knows no
religion)
• Weakened the power of the pope since he had called
for these failed expedition.
• Strengthened the kings. All these nobles and knights
had gone off and gotten killed which meant the power
went to the monarchs. By extension, it weakened the
feudal system.
• The Byzantines are weakened.
• Down to modern-day, Muslims are a little irked about
the Crusades.