The Roman Empire was gradually converted to the Catholic Faith in a period of three centuries – from 30 AD to 330.

The Roman army, on which the whole structure of society depended, had been more and more recruited from half-civilized tribes: Slaves and Germans.

Under such circumstances central authority broke down and the Roman Empire entered the so called Dark Ages (about 476 to 1000 AD)

About 1000 Western Europe awoke to the Middle Ages, a time of learning, building and the arts. Europe was unified under the Catholic Faith.

In the 7^th century arose the religion of Mohammed who preached beyond the effective boundaries of the Empire.

Muslims believe that Muhammad was God’s final prophet until the end of time; they believe that God revealed his direct word for humanity to Muhammad (570-632) through the angel Gabriel. Earlier prophets included Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

They say that Jews changed the Torah and Christians changed the gospel.

The fundamental concept of Islam is the Oneness of God. They consider the trinity as the worship of three gods (polytheism).

There are several groups within Islam. Sunnis are the largest group (85%) and Shi’a (15%). Wahabis are classified as Sunnis.

The medieval Islamic state was often more tolerant than many other states of the time which insisted on complete conformity to a state religion. The record of contemporary Muslim-majority states is mixed.

Hard line Muslims claim that once a territory has been under Muslim rule it can never be relinquished and that such a period of Islamic rule gives the Muslims eternal right to the claimed territory, e.g. Israel, Spain and parts of the Balkans.

Muslims believe that the God they worship is the same God of Abraham. Christians usually see it otherwise.

He preached a powerful new heresy to which he and his followers converted by force and zeal.

It was a simplification of the Catholic Faith, eliminating nearly all that seemed difficult to the untrained masses: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the priesthood.

The creed of the Mohammedans would be the most dangerous religious movement to afflict Christianity until the time of Luther.

Like the later Reformation Protestants the Prophet Mohamed preached a simple, rational religion. It was a religion of the book (the Koran.)

Islam appealed to the common man because it offered worldly as well as otherworld benefits. The majority of Muslims are not Arabs.

A man was allowed as many as four wives at a time and any number of concubines. Unlimited divorce is available. Prior to Muhammad men in Arabia sometimes had hundreds of wives. Islam introduced moderation and raised the status of women.

Sharia law makes the crime of rape virtually impossible to prove. The testimony of the victim herself is inadmissible. Four male witnesses are required to prove rape. They must have witnessed the rape in graphic detail. A Muslim woman who is raped is often afraid to file a complaint with police, for in the absence of four male witnesses her testimony can be taken as admission of adultery or fornication – a crime that could cost her her life.

Women were valued at half that of a man. Women were seen as evil creatures, not likely to go to heaven because of their evil nature.

Complaining husbands have permission to beat their wives. Complaining wives get criticized for complaining. (Sura 4:34: "Send them to beds apart and beat them.")

Muslim women must have permission from their husbands to leave the home.

It had a creed of Holy War which attracted the nomadic tribes of the desert who could now raid and pillage in the name of God and of divine conquest.

The afterlife promised to followers of Mohammed was a tower of luxury with an inexhaustible supply of beautiful virgins to satisfy one’s every sexual desire.

Not long after Mohammed’s death in 632 his Arab followers swept north making converts. Those who jointed, if they were slaves or debtors, recovered their freedom and saw themselves free from the imperial government.

Islam revered Jesus Christ as the greatest of the prophets but rejected the Trinity. It revered Our Lady. It had little ritual; only prayers that all could follow.

Within a century Islam had mastered and was governing Syria, North Africa and most of Spain. They were thrown back from the heart of France south to the Pyrenees.

Islam chiefs and their soldiers gained political power even though the majority of their subjects were Christians.

The Mongol hordes were welcomed by Islamic leaders. They became fanatically Islamic. These hordes are generally known as the "Turks". Their function was lust for cruelty and destruction.

The encouragement of the Turks was the great and nearly mortal wound delivered indirectly by Islam to the civilization of Europe.

It was the Turks who overcame the Byzantine power at the battle of Manzikert in 1071 under Alp Arslan.

Alp Arslan (1029 – December 15, 1072) was the second sultan of the dynasty of Seljuk Turks, in Persia, and great-grandson of Seljuk, the founder of the dynasty. He assumed the name of Muhammad when he embraced Islam, and on account of his military prowess and personal valor and fighting skills he obtained the surname Alp Arslan, which signifies "a valiant lion."

This paved the way for Turkish dominance in Anatolia (Asia Minor). This also marked the beginning of the decline of the Byzantine Empire. In the centuries after Manzikert, the relatively small number of Turkic immigrants began to assimilate local populations as their numbers grew. Anatolia was an ethnic mosaic, a region with a wide variety of peoples, but dominated by the Byzantine Greeks and other prominent regional groups such as Armenians, Kurds, and others.

Points in Pope Benedict XVI’s talk by George Weigel:

Talk number 2, October 10th, 2006

Michael Cerularius was Patriarch of Constantinople from 1043 to 1059.

He is noted for disputing with Pope Leo IX (1049 to 1054) over church practices where the Roman Church began to differ from the east, especially the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist.

Though normally dated to 1054 the East-West Schism was actually the result of an extended period of estrangement between the two Churches.

The primary causes were disputes over papal authority. The Pope claimed authority over the four Eastern patriarchs (Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem), while the churches of the east claimed that the primacy of the Patriarch of Rome was only honorary.

Disunion in the Roman Empire contributed to disunion in the Church. The last Emperor to rule over a united Roman Empire was Theodosius the Great (379 to 395). After his death, the empire permanently split into the Eastern and Western Empires, each with its own Emperor.

By the end of the 5^th century the Western Roman Empire had been destroyed by barbarians while the Eastern Roman Empire (aka Byzantine Empire) continued to thrive. Thus the political unity of the Roman Empire was the first to fall.

Michael Cerularius, the Eastern Patriarch, persecuted and shut down Latin-rite churches in the East. In response the pope excommunicated him in 1054. The Patriarch, in turn, excommunicated the Holy See. This inflamed the nationalism of the Eastern churches and led them into schism.

Rome viewed the schism as temporary, and still does.

When Emperor Alexius (1081 to 1118) asked the Pope for help against the Muslims Pope Urban II (1088 to 1099) had no qualms about directing Catholic knights to rescue the schismatic emperor in Constantinople.

(Byzantine: of or relating to the churches using a traditional Greek rite and subject to Eastern canon law.)

The appearance of the crusading armies at Constantinople raised the greatest trouble, and helped to bring about in the future irremediable misunderstandings between the Greeks and the Latin Christians.

The unsolicited invasion of the latter alarmed Alexius, who tried to prevent the concentration of all these forces at Constantinople by transporting to Asia Minor each Western army in the order of its arrival; moreover, he endeavored to extort from the leaders of the crusade a promise that they would restore to the Greek Empire the lands they were about to conquer.

After resisting the imperial entreaties throughout the winter, Godfrey of Bouillon, at length consented to take the oath of fealty. Bohemond and Robert unhesitatingly assumed the same obligation; Raymond of Toulouse, however, remained obdurate.

Entering Asia Minor (Anatolia; modern Turkey) the crusaders laid siege to the city of Nicaea but did not enter it (1 June 1097). Soon they took Edessa and moved into Syria on 20 October 1097 and the fortified city of Antioch. On 2 June 1098 the crusaders took Antioch by storm.

With these conquests came a greater sense of security and the reestablishment of Christian civilization. Pilgrims now receive some protection, though the journey was still dangerous

After in-house differences, it was not until April 1099 that the march towards Jerusalem was begun. On 7 June the crusaders began the siege of Jerusalem. The attack of Jerusalem began 14 July 1099. The next day the Christians entered Jerusalem from all sides and slew its inhabitants regardless of age or sex.

Godfrey of Bouillon was popularly chosen as lord of the new conquest. He called himself "Defender of the Holy Sepulcher".

The First Crusade was the most successful from a military point of view. Accounts of this action are shocking.

Some of the results of the first crusade were not expected. Alexius I thought that the Byzantine territories would be returned to him and the Eastern Empire, but instead the European conquerors established four independent Latin kingdoms. In addition, three religious/military orders (Hospitallers, Templars, and Teutonic Knights) came into power. The stated purpose of these orders was to protect pilgrims and holy sites.

During the first half of the twelfth century the Christian states of the East were completely organized, and even eclipsed in wealth and prosperity of most of the Western states.

Talk number 3, October 17th, 2006

Many dangers, unfortunately, threatened this prosperity. On the south were the Caliphs of Egypt, on the east the Seljuk Ameers of Damascus, Hamah and Aleppo, and on the north the Byzantine emperors, eager to bring the Latin states under their power.

Moreover, in the presence of so many enemies the Christian states lacked cohesion and discipline. The help they received from the West was too scattered and intermittent. Nevertheless these Western knights, isolated amid Mohammedans and forced, because of the torrid climate, to lead a life far different from that to which they had been accustomed at home, displayed admirable bravery and energy in their efforts to save the Christian colonies.

Saladin invaded the Kingdom of Jerusalem and, although Guy de Lusignan gathered all his forces to repel the attack, on 4 July, 1187, Saladin's army annihilated that of the Christians on the shores of Lake Tiberias. The king, the grand master of the Temple, Renaud de Châtillon, and the most powerful men in the realm were made prisoners. After slaying Renaud with his own hand, Saladin marched on Jerusalem. The city capitulated 17 September, and Tyre, Antioch, and Tripoli were the only places in Syria that remained to the Christians.

Salah al-Din (1138–1193) was a 12th century Kurdish Muslim warrior from Tikrit, in present day northern Iraq. He was renowned in both the Muslim and Christian worlds for his leadership and military prowess tempered by his chivalry and merciful nature, during his war against the Crusaders.

It has been customary to describe the Crusades as eight in number:

After a period of relative peace, in which Christians and Muslims co-existed in the Holy Land, Bernard of Clairvaux preached a new crusade when the town of Edessa was conquered by the Turks. French and German armies under Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, marched to Asia Minor in 1147, but failed to accomplish any major successes, and indeed endangered the survival of the Crusader states with a foolish attack on Damascus. By 1150, both leaders had returned to their countries without any result.

In 1187, Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, recaptured Jerusalem. Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by several of Europe's most important leaders: Philip II of France, Richard I of England and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick drowned in Cilicia in 1190, leaving an unstable alliance between the English and the French. Philip left, in 1191, after the Crusaders had recaptured Acre from the Muslims. The Crusader army headed down the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They defeated the Muslims near Arsuf and were in sight of Jerusalem. However, the inability of the Crusaders to thrive in the locale due to inadequate food and water resulted in an empty victory. Richard left the following year after establishing a truce with Saladin. On Richard's way home, his ship was wrecked and he ended up in Austria. In Austria, his enemy, Duke Leopold, captured him, delivered him to Frederick's son Henry VI and Richard was held for a king's ransom. By 1197, Henry felt himself ready for a Crusade, but he died in the same year of malaria.

Jerusalem having fallen back into Muslim hands a decade earlier, the Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202 by Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt.

If the crusaders would sail to Constantinople and topple the reigning emperor, Alexius offered to reunite the Byzantine church with Rome, pay the crusaders an enormous sum, and join the crusade to Egypt with a large army. It was a tempting offer for an enterprise that was short on funds. The Byzantine prince's proposal involved his restoration to the throne, and not the sack of his capital city. Boniface agreed, and Alexius returned with Boniface to rejoin the fleet at Corfu after it had sailed from Zara. The rest of the crusade leaders eventually accepted the plan as well, but a great many of the rank and file wanted nothing to do with the proposal, and many deserted. The fleet arrived at Constantinople in late June, 1203.

The Venetians, under Doge (leader) Enrico Dandolo, gained control of this crusade and diverted it, first to the Christian city of Zara, (the Italian name of the Adriatic port city of Zadar former capital of Dalmatia, in Croatia) then to Constantinople where they attempted to place a Byzantine exile on the throne. After a series of misunderstandings and outbreaks of violence, the city was sacked by the crusaders in 1204.

When Innocent III heard of the conduct of his pilgrims, he was filled with shame and strongly rebuked them.

Almost none of the crusaders ever made it to the Holy Land, and the unstable Latin empire siphoned off much of Europe's crusading energy. The legacy of the Fourth Crusade was the deep sense of betrayal the Latins had instilled in their Greek coreligionists. With the events of 1204, the schism between the Catholic West and Orthodox East was complete. As an epilogue to the event, Pope Innocent III, the man who had launched the expedition, thundered against the crusaders thus:

"You vowed to liberate the Holy Land but you rashly turned away from the purity of your vow when you took up arms not against Saracens but Christians… The Greek Church has seen in the Latins nothing other than an example of affliction and the works of Hell, so that now it rightly detests them more than dogs".

Eight hundred years after the Fourth Crusade, Pope John Paul II twice expressed sorrow for the events of the Fourth Crusade. In 2001, he wrote to Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens, saying "It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. The fact that they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret." In 2004, while Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, was visiting the Vatican, John Paul II asked "How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust." In the opinion of Jonathan Phillips, this was "an extraordinary statement — an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the terrible slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade

The Fourth Crusade was one of the last of the major crusades to be directed by the Papacy, and even the Fourth quickly fell out of Papal control. After bickering between laymen and the papal legate led to the collapse of the Fifth Crusade, later crusades were directed by individual monarchs, mostly directed against Egypt. Only one subsequent crusade the Sixth, succeeded in restoring Jerusalem to Christian rule, and only briefly.

By processions, prayers, and preaching, the Church attempted to set another crusade on foot, and the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) formulated a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land. A crusading force from Hungary, Austria, and Bavaria achieved a remarkable feat in the capture of Damietta in Egypt in 1219, but under the urgent insistence of the papal legate, Pelagius, they proceeded to a foolhardy attack on Cairo, and an inundation of the Nile compelled them to choose between surrender and destruction.

In 1228, Emperor Frederick II set sail from Brindisi (on the Adriatic) for Syria, even though under a papal excommunication. Through diplomacy he achieved unexpected success, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem being delivered to the Crusaders for a period of ten years. This was the first major crusade not initiated by the Papacy, a trend that was to continue for the rest of the century.

The papal interests represented by the Templars brought on a conflict with Egypt in 1243, and in the following year an Egyptian force stormed Jerusalem. Although this provoked no widespread outrage in Europe as the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 had done, Louis IX of France organized a crusade against Egypt from 1248 to 1254, leaving from southern France. It was a failure and Louis spent much of the crusade living at the court of the Crusader kingdom in Acre.

The eighth Crusade was organized by Louis IX in 1270, to come to the aid of the remnants of the Crusader states in Syria. However, the crusade was diverted to Tunis, where Louis spent only two months before dying. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades are counted as a single crusade. The Ninth Crusade is sometimes also counted as part of the Eighth.

The future Edward I of England undertook another expedition in 1271, after having accompanied Louis on the Eighth Crusade. He accomplished very little in Syria and retired the following year after a truce.

With the fall of Antioch (1268), Tripoli (1289), and Acre (1291) the last traces of the Christian rule in Syria disappeared.

This division is arbitrary and excludes many important expeditions, among them those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In reality the Crusades continued until the end of the seventeenth century.

Saint Albert, bishop of Vercelli Italy was made patriarch of Jerusalem by Innocent III in1205. He governed his see from the city of Acre because Jerusalem itself was under Saracen occupation. He was respected and trusted by Christians and Moslems alike

There was but one crusade. It was the great breaking out of all Western Europe into the Orient for the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher. Within a life it had failed. With Jerusalem in the hands of the Infidel the purpose of the original campaign was gone, its fruits lost.

It had been one continuous battle. Reinforcements were inadequate. Christendom could not or would not supply in sufficient amount the recruitment necessary to holding its bastion in the East and that is why the Crusades failed.