Crusade
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a military expedition under the banner of the cross, as that against the infidels of the Holy Land; also any war or expedition undertaken on pretense of defending the cause of religion; a romantic or enthusiastic enterprise; as, a crusade against vice. In the European history of the Middle Ages, crusades were wars undertaken by confederacies of chiefs and soldiers, with a religious object. Those which were engaged in by a great part of the nations of Europe for the recovery of Palestine from the infidels, are now frequently denoted by this peculiar name. The term crusade is derived from the sacred symbol of the cross, which was borne by the warriors engaged in it over their arms; the color of the cross often served to designate the nation of the soldier; as the white cross on a red ground, France; the red cross on a white ground, England. The principal crusades for the conquest of Palestine were: 1. The first, A. D. 1096, excited by the preaching of Peter the Hermit and the encouragement of Pope Urban II., in which Godfrey of Bouillon headed the Christians, who made themselves masters of Jerusalem and a great part of Palestine. 2. The second, A. D. 1142, in which Conrad III. of Germany and Louis VII. of France led armies to complete the conquest of Palestine, but without success. 3. The third, A. D. 1189, was occasioned by the capture of Jerusalem by Sultan Saladin; Frederick (Barbarossa) of Germany, Philip Augustus of France, and Richard Cœur de Lion of England, were the chief among the confederate monarchs; the capture of Acre was almost the only fruit of this great expedition. 4. The fourth crusade was conducted by the King of Hungary, Andrew II., in 1217. 5. The fifth (1228) was conducted by Frederick II. (grandson of Barbarossa), who recovered Jerusalem, but for a short time. 6. The sixth, A. D. 1248, by Saint Louis, King of France, against Egypt, but without success. Among other wars which have been at arious times denoted by the name of various crusade, that against Raymond, Count of Toulouse, and his heretical vassals, the Albigeois, of which the first leader was the famous Simon de Montfort, is the most memorable.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's list of 1921 runs from Peter the Hermit in 1096 to Saint Louis in 1248, and its numbering no longer matches the one now standard: what modern historians call the Fourth Crusade, the expedition that was diverted to sack Christian Constantinople in 1204, does not appear in Collier's sequence at all, and its "second, A. D. 1142" is now dated 1147-49. Pope John Paul II expressed regret for the 1204 sack in 2001, a measure of how live the events remain. Scholarship has also widened the definition: since the 1970s most historians treat the Baltic campaigns, the Spanish Reconquista and the Albigensian war Collier's mentions as an afterthought as crusades proper, running well past 1248 into the sixteenth century, and they credit Urban II's appeal at Clermont in 1095 more than the preaching of Peter the Hermit. The word itself has grown politically charged in a way the 1921 breeziness about "a crusade against vice" does not anticipate.
Written for this edition, 2026.