ABSTRACT
In November 1095, Pope Urban II preached a sermon in a field outside the French town of Clermont in which he exhorted the people of Europe to travel to the Holy Land and retake Jerusalem and other Christian holy places from the Muslims. Tens of thousands of people left their homes for the Levant and, less than four years later, they had captured Jerusalem from the Muslims and set up four 'crusader states' based at Jerusalem, Antioch, Tripoli and Edessa. The Crusade was presented to Latin Europe as a means by which vengeance could be wreaked on those who polluted Christian holy places, who persecuted Eastern Christians, and who, through their imagined links to the pagans of Rome, killed Christ. Following the hardening of attitudes amongst the Muslims as jihad propaganda took hold, native Christians living under Muslim rule found themselves increasingly on the end of retribution from Muslims.
