Perhaps Christendom’s greatest historical embarrassment, the Crusades, at the time were a brilliant strategic move by papal leaders to unite a warring Europe against heathen enemies threatening the Byzantine church. Not that Pope Urban II in Rome cared much about Constantinople or vice versa. Each part of the church had excommunicated the other in the Great Schism of 1054. But internal feuding needed alternative war games, and the call to defend the Holy Land and the Eastern Church against invading Turks presented a quite legitimate target for knights and lords otherwise bent on battling each other. The First Crusade, led by Peter the Hermit in 1095, was a militarydisaster. The same could be said for one of the last crusades—the Children’s Crusade of 1212—when hundreds of youngsters sailed fromMarseilles toward Palestine and fell into the hands of slave traders.Between these, however, many great medieval reputations were made.Richard the Lion-Hearted of England was one of many who led armiesto victory, his soldiers bearing the famous sign of the Red Cross. In 1099,Jerusalem was taken. When Godfrey of Bouillon was offered the throneof Jerusalem, he refused to wear a crown of gold in the city where hisSavior had once worn a crown
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