ABSTRACT
The Crusades were religious wars for the capture and defence of Jerusalem from the infidel, which succeeded in gaining the Holy City in 1099, and in holding it till 1187, and by which unsuccessful attempts were made to retake it later. As such, they could not be without results upon Christianity at large. Yet they were not only religious wars, but wars of frontier defence, between the civilisations of Europe and Asia; their direct results were probably larger in the political and social sphere than in the religious. Though the Crusades affected mainly the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, their antecedents stretched much farther back.
