Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #40 - Church and Empire

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #40 - Church and Empire

Okay, so good morning. Today we are doing the Crusades, which will lead us into the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Simon Revolution. Okay? Three questions we are looking at today are what are the Crusades? Second question is, why did they happen? The third question is, why did they stop? Okay, Those are the three major questions we are looking at today. In order for me to explain the answers, I first need to provide a lot of background. Okay? First of all, is in the beginning of Christianity, in the Bible, the early Christianity was a religion of two things, humility and poverty.

Okay, so let me tell your story from the Bible to illustrate this. One day, Jesus and his disciples were out preaching. And then a young man comes to Jesus and says, I loved your sermon. I want to know how to be a better person. And then Jesus says to him, make sure you follow the Ten Commandments and the laws of the prophets. The young man says, I'm a very pious man.

I already do this. I want to do more. And then Jesus says to him, then do this. Give up all your wealth. Give your wealth to the poor. And then follow me. And then you will have all the treasure in the kingdom of heaven. The young man was really distraught because he was very, very wealthy.

And he didn't want to give up his wealth. So he walked away. Then Jesus turned to his disciples and he said, it is easier for camel to go through the eye of a needle, which is say it's impossible, okay? Then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Okay, so here Jesus is negating wealth. And this is a revolutionary idea at that time

because for people in the Western world, the entire point of believing in God, the entire point of making sacrifices to your gods, is to have more wealth in life, right? How do you know if God favors you? Well, you become wealthy. So what Jesus is saying here is revolutionary, meaning you should live a pious life

so that you may enjoy a good life in heaven. So that's the heart. and soul of the Christian religion and what makes it different from previous religions. That said, the Catholic Church is probably the wealthiest and most powerful religious organization ever in human history. We have actually no idea how wealthy the Catholic Church is. Their wealth is immeasurable. This is St. Peter's Basilica, the Church in the Vatican, where the Catholic Church is based.

Inside this church is a lot of gold, okay? A lot of gold. So in its thousand years, close to 2,000 years of history, the Catholic Church has amassed more money than God. So how to explain this contradiction? How is it that Catholic Church was able to amass so much wealth? Okay, so as we discussed, After the fall of Rome, the Catholic Church basically became the new Roman Empire.

After the fall of Rome, for the longest time, Europe was poor. But starting about the year 1,000, Europe became increasingly wealthy for a variety of reasons. The main reason is something called the medieval warm period, meaning it was just easier to grow crops. That followed the invention of the water mill, windmill, and horse color, which made it easier for people to grow crops. This is what we call the mini agricultural revolution. Because of this excess wealth, you saw the rise of cities, urban centers. This allowed Europe to start trading with the rest of the world, primarily the the Abbasid Caliphate, which we discussed last week, and as such, Europe became increasingly

wealthy. But what's important for us to remember is with wealth comes inequality. So this also marks the high point of feudalism. You have too many people, too little land, and as a result, you have feudalism, where the nobility controls all the land, the peasants became poor, dependent. and often indebted. So as you can see, these are the major city centers of Europe at this time.

The wealthiest city in Europe is still continental, right? But you have Rome, London, Paris, all emerging as major manufacturing and urban centers. What's important for us to remember also is that around this time, one of the wealthiest parts of Europe is Spain. This is important because Spain is not Christian. It's Muslim in the year 1000.

And this will create conflict between Europe and Spain. So how was the church able to amass so much power during this time? Well, because the church pioneered a new way of controlling people that was not possible before. So to illustrate this point, let's compete. an empire with the church, the Catholic Church. First question, who's in charge? Well, in an empire, the emperor is in charge, but it's a human being who is flawed and mortal.

He will eventually die. He's also subjective. People understand that he will make mistakes. So that's why you must appeal to him. You must try to convince him. But with the Catholic Church, the person in charge is God, who is perfect, immutable,

immutable and eternal. He can never make a mistake, and he will always be there. Second difference is an empire demands labor from you. It demands that you toil and sweat. But the church demands your soul, your eternal spiritual obedience, your heart and your mind. And the third major difference,

The third major difference is an empire can only put you to death as the worst punishment, but the church can sentence you to eternal damnation. The church can have you burn in hell for eternity, okay? And so this concept of eternal damnation is the source of a lot of the church's power, okay? So the church had something called a faith monopoly. It was the only religion, it was a true religion. And so there are certain ways that this power would express and benefit itself in Europe at this time.

I'm going to have to go through a lot. This is a lot of information. I apologize, but you will need to know this in order for us to go on in the course. This is especially important for the Protestant Reformation, because the Prostom Reformation will be a rejection of a lot of these practices, okay? All right, so the first thing you need to understand of the church in about the year 1000 is, it's an imperial bureaucracy. The Pope is basically the emperor, and then each region has bishops that control the region.

It's a huge bureaucracy. That's very similar to the bureaucracy in Constantinople, as well as in China. Okay? So top-down hierarchy. Second thing you need to know is, the official language of the church was Latin. During church services, the priest would give sermons in Latin.

The Bible was written in Latin. The purpose for this is to tell people that the Bible, that theology was not for them. They just had to listen and obey. So that gave the priest a lot of power. It was also an explicit rule that only priests could preach the Bible. You had to be ordained and authorized by the church in order to be able to tell what Christianity meant. You had to recite Nicene Creed, which is a Holy Trinity. So remember,

we discussed the Holy Trinity, the idea of monotheism, and this is the dominant belief system of the church. There's something called the sacraments, okay? Seven holy sacraments that you must pay for. And these are rituals provided to you by priests in the church. What these rituals are trying to do is they're trying to channel divine energy of heaven and Jesus and God in order to make your life much more fortunate. So an example of this is called the Eucharist. And so in the Eucharist employs the principle of transmutation.

So during the Eucharist, and it's basically a common meal, what the priest will do is he will channel Jesus from heaven and his body will become expressed in bread, okay? The bread will become the body of Jesus. And then his blood will manifest itself in wine or water. And then you will feast on the bread and wine. You eat Jesus, you drink Jesus, and Jesus comes into you. Right? And if this sounds weird, it is weird.

And that's why the Protestants, a lot of Protestants, will rebel against this. They think it's superstitious. Right. You also have the church determining who goes to hell, heaven, and purgatory, as well as for how long. Hell is where you burn for all of eternity. Heaven is where you are with God. of God. Procratory is if you commit sins and you need to cleanse yourself of these sins.

So you might be in procuratory for like one year if you steal, but you might also be there for a thousand years if you killed someone, okay? And the church, it's up to the church to determine how long you're in progatory for. There's something called the canonization of saints where the church can determine who are saints. A lot of Protestants in the future will say this is wrong because only the Bible, only Jesus, can determine who is worthy. The church doesn't have the power to determine this. And last thing is, and this is really important, the authority of the clerics was absolute, and heretics were those who denied the absolute authority of the church.

So this is important because some people think that heretics are those who disagree with the church. For example, they don't really understand the Nissin Creed. Well, if you don't understand something, it's called ignorance or superstition. You understand? And therefore, the church has a responsibility to educate you. Once a church educates you and you still refuse to admit the authority of the church, then you become a heretic, which means you will become excommunicated. Xcommunicate means that you will be kicked out of the community of the church, which means you will burn in hell forever. As well, you could also be burned at a stake for being a heretic.

Does that make sense? So these are the sources of the power of the church. As you can see, at this time, the Catholic Church is a very elitist, very aloof, and very distant religion. It's designed in a way to be removed from the ordinary struggles of ordinary people. So, as you can imagine, with so much power comes corruption. Augustine, in the city of God, he basically imagined the intellectual blueprint for the Catholic Church. He believed the Catholic Church had to be this eternal spiritual force that represents. than God on earth.

So what's really important was for the church to focus on spirituality. With power, the church slowly became more corrupted. So let's look at some instances of corruption that were legal practices at this time. The first is the idea of indulgence. And this means that maybe you committed a lot of sins, but you have a lot of money.

What you can do is bribe the church to make your stay in purgatory shorter. This is basically bribery, all right, spiritual bribery. And obviously, a lot of Christians would have issues with this, okay? Second is the idea of simony. Simony just means that if you're rich, you can buy yourself into the church regardless of your education, regardless of your understanding of the theology. Okay, this is called simony.

Then you're something called the selling of holy relics. So again, at this time, everyone's very superstitious. So they want to buy relics in order to channel the divine power of Jesus, right? Well, the church would sell these relics, and a lot of them would be fake. But a lot of Christians, as you can imagine, would find the very idea of the church engaging in commerce to be very offensive. Worldiness means that you have the conjoining, the conflation of the nobility with the church. So a lot of princes became bishops. Cains could pick who could become bishops.

And priests were supposed to be celibate. They were supposed to devote their life to God. But a lot of them got married, had kids, and owned property, and became very wealthy. Okay? So a conflation of the nobility and the church. A conflation of temporal power with spiritual power. TIFs means that parishioners had to pay taxes. Prisioners had to pay taxes to not only the nobility, but also to the church as well. The very last idea is the idea of feudalism. And this means that the church controlled at its height one third of all the the land in Christian Europe and they didn't have to pay taxes to the nobility to the prince so as a result of all these of all this corruption and special privilege the

church became those powerful organization in all of Europe okay and again they had this power because people were afraid of burning in hell for eternity okay Even kings were afraid. But we have to remember this. And this is very important. Ultimately, if you're a church, your power, your legitimacy, your authority comes from your ability to enforce your belief system on everyone. Okay? This is what I call orthodoxy.

The church must enforce right thinking, correct thinking on people. If people disagree, if an increasing number of people disagree, then, you know, they, you know, your authority, your power will decrease. Now at this time in the year 1000, there are five sources of conflict for the church. Five things that will question the legitimacy of the church. The first thing is this. Muslims occupy the Holy Land. Dulutham right now is being controlled by the Fatimans, which is an Islamic caliphate. And this is embarrassing, right?

Because if you are the two representative of God on earth, why is Jerusalem being controlled by the Muslims? That's embarrassing. Second problem is Muslim Spain, it's more wealthy, more cosmopolitan and innovative than Christian Europe. A lot of the reason why is, Muslim Spain, it is much more open, inclusive, and tolerant than the Catholic Church. It also trades with the rest of the Muslim world.

And as we know from the Islamic Golden Age lecture, the Muslim world right now is very, very wealthy. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all get along very fine in Muslim Spain. And it's just right next door. Everyone can see that Muslim Spain, it's much more wealthy. So that's another problem. A third problem is something called the Great Shizum of 1054. That's when the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Church in Constantinople, it broke away, it split away from the Roman Catholic Church in Rome.

Now you have two different churches, all claiming to be the one true church of Jesus. That's a huge problem. Another problem, of course, is the corruption that we just discussed. The conflation of spiritual power with temporal ambition. The last problem is this. The last problem is the set. Now, something that we discussed a lot last semester is that humans are first and foremost religious. Humans have religious needs, and these religious needs often trump their material needs.

For example, food, water, and shelter. Humans have a fundamental need for community. intimacy and truth. But the Catholic Church is denying intimacy and truth to humans. Humans want to be with God. They want to serve God. But the Catholic Church says, no, we are the middleman. You have to go through us in order to celebrate God. So there's a lot of discontent at this point in Christian Europe against the Catholic Church. So these are five problems. And again, the Catholic church the entire source of their power is during their ability to maintain orthodoxy so they develop a three-pronged strategy that they will use basically a

lot okay throughout the history of Europe okay that these three-front strategy are scapegoating persecuting and crusading okay and you guys need to know this because these three ideas will recur over and over in European history. The idea of scapegoating is this. In Europe at this time, even though the Jewish community is a lot smaller, it's still present. Now the question then is, what are the Jews still doing in Europe?

And the answer is, well, a lot of them are working for the nobility. The nobility inherit their wealth, but they don't want to do any work. They don't want to manage your land, they don't want to run their business, they don't want to collect taxes, and they don't want to run their banks. So they get Jews to do this for them because dues are clever, they're hardworking, but most importantly, they're completely dependent on the protection of nobility.

Does that make sense? Because at this point in Christian history, remember, the Catholic Church teaches. Christians that the Jews were responsible for persecuting Jesus and therefore Christians really don't like Jews. So if Jews want to stay in Europe, if they want to stay together's community, they are complete dependent on the protection of nobility and as such they essentially become slaves to the nobility. They have no choice but to serve the nobility. This is bad thing. for them because the peasants don't like being exploited by the nobility. Remember this

is a feudal system where peasants are too poor and too indebted to the nobility. But in their day-to-day interactions, who do they work with? They work with Jews, right? Jews are one who comes and collects taxes for the nobility. Jews are the ones who sell them goods. So what happens over time is the peasants, the resentment against nobility is channeled towards the Jews. So whenever there's a major conflict, guess who gets killed? Guess who gets persecuted? It's a Jews.

And this is a pattern that will be consistent for basically all of European history, up until the Holocaust. If you want to understand why the Holocaust happened. This is why it happened, okay? There's a long-term enmity hatred of the European people against the Jews, created by the nobility. All right.

When the coffee becomes too intense, what will happen is the nobility will protect themselves by expelling the Jews, okay? So in 1492, Spain expelled the Jews, but before that, the Germans expelled the Jews in 1,100, France, and 13.06, okay? But before then, you have these massacres going on all around Europe. So the, I'm not sure if you're able to see the black skull, but that's this massacre of Jews.

Okay? All right, so being a Jew means to be constantly persecuted. And again, they're being scapegoated by the Catholic Church in order to reduce tensions between the nobility and the peasantry. So that's the first mechanism. Then you have the Crusades. All right, so to understand the Crusades, let me get some historical background. In the year 638, in the year 638, the Muslims take over Jerusalem from the Bites and the Empire. They conquer it.

And once they take it over, they make Jerusalem into an open, inclusive, and tolerant religious community where Christians, Jews, and Muslims can celebrate their religion openly. So, after that, what Christians have to do is make these pilgrimages to lose some. And for most of this history, it's fine. There are no issues. But what will happen is, as the Byzantine Empire becomes weaker and the Abbasic Caliphate becomes weaker, there's now chaos. And as such, bandits roam the land.

And pilgrims find it more and more dangerous to venture. into Jerusalem. Does that make sense? All right? So now it's become much more dangerous for Christians to venture into Jerusalem because of all the internal chaos going on in the Muslim land. The people who are creating all this chaos are called the Seljuk Turks. Last class we talked about the rise of Genghis Khan, right? And what I said last class is the step people are always invading agricultural empires. So the Turks, They are based in Central Asia, and then slowly over time, they will conquer the Abbasic Caliphate. And in 1071, they will begin to occupy Jerusalem. And the Turks leave Jerusalem alone, but because of this conflict, what's happening is the way to Jerusalem, it's much more dangerous. As well, the Turks are now threatening Byzantium, okay, consensable right here.

In fact, they're conquering a lot of territory around Constantinople. And as such, the emperor of Constantinople, the Byzantine emperor, he appeals to Pope Urban II, who is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Can you please help me and save me from the Seljuk Turks? And so what Pope Urban II will do, remember, popes are politicians. He sees the opportunity here to unite Christianism under the authority of Rome, right? And he sees the opportunity to reclaim Jerusalem as Christian territory. He sees an opportunity to channel the religious energies of the peasantry against the Muslims.

So what he does is in the year 10, 95, he will give a speech calling for the First Crusade, which begins the crusading period. Now we're going to look at very closely at this speech, and it's important we do because this rhetoric, this philosophy, philosophy will underpin the relationship between Christians, Muslims, and Jews for most of European history. Okay? So let's see how the Pope thinks. All who died by the way, whether by land or by sea or in battle against the pagans shall have immediate remission of sins. Okay, the pagans are non-Christians, the Muslims, the Jews. Okay, so this, so what the Pope is calling for is a jihad. All good Christians now must go into battle to reclaim Jerusalem.

And if you do so, you will be granted immediate access to heaven regardless of what you did and how you sin. Doesn't make sense, guys. This is a jihad. He's calling for jihad. The concept people think comes from the Islamic world. It's very much a Christian concept of jihad, where if you go to Jerusalem and you die, you're going straight to heaven.

Okay? You'll be right beside God. Now he also says, oh, what a disgrace if such a despise and base race which worships demons. A despise and base race which worships demons. He's talking about the Muslims. Muslims don't worship demons. Muslims worship the same God as the Jews and the Christians. In fact, a lot of their religious practice is similar to the Christians and Jews.

When Muhammad and the Muslims came to conquer the Holy Land, they did so in a peaceful manner. They tried to reduce as much bloodshed as possible. And here, Pope Urban II, he spreading racism against the Muslims. In fact, what the rumors are is that in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Christian women are being enslaved. Christians are being massacred and kicked out of Jerusalem. Christians are no longer allowed into Jerusalem. These are all rumors.

They're all fake. They're not true. But Pope Orens 2nd, he is trying to whip up this racist anger at the Muslims. Should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipot God and is made glorious with the name of Christ. It is embarrassing for us as Christians that the Muslims control. that the Muslims control Jerusalem. We must fix this. Okay?

All right, let's continue. Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war, which should have been begun long ago. Why do we wait so long to reclaim Jerusalem? They've had it since 638.

It's now the year 10, it's now the year 1095. Why are we finding ourselves? Why is there war in Europe? We should all be going to the Holy Land and kill all the Muslims, okay? Again, this is important that we read because this rhetoric, this logic, this emotion is going to

basically justify the age of conquest, exploration, and imperialism, which will follow after this, okay? Let those who for a long time have been robbers now become knights. Okay, you understand? You could be the lowest person on earth. You could be a thief.

But if you go on a crusade, you are now a nobleman. You are now a knight. You are now a hero, a valiant hero for Christianity. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in the proper way against the barbarians. Okay? Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain their eternal reward. This is what he's saying. If you go on this crusade, regardless of who you are,

you will be honored by God you will receive eternal reward me regardless of what you did okay you could be the worst criminal in Europe it doesn't matter once you go on this crusade you will be saved all right so he makes this bargain with the people of Europe and as you can imagine there's a groundswell of excitement okay a lot of people go on this crusade against the Turks. All right, so let's summarize and look at the individual reasons why people are going on this crusade. It's a long way, and it's very dangerous, but they're very excited to go. Okay, why? All right, so the first reason is penance. So a lot are violent people who have engaged in war, right? They're going on this crusade, they will be forgiven for their sins.

It's either you go on a crusade or you go join a monastery, okay? Clerical immunity. What this means is that if you are a criminal, if you killed someone, if you're going to crusade, you will be immune, you will be absolved of these crimes. So as you're going to imagine, a lot of psychopaths go on this crusade, a lot of criminals. Vengeance. People are hearing rumors that the Muslims are killing Christian women so they want to kill Muslim men, okay?

elite over production. So as we discussed, when a society becomes much more wealthy, you have a problem of elite over production. Basically, younger sons who cannot inherit any land. And so they must go on a crusade to win over their own land, okay? To obtain their own land and become nobility locally. Second coming. Okay, what this means is that, okay, so in Christianity, there are many powerful ideas. The crucification of Jesus is a powerful idea, but the second coming is the most powerful idea. It's the idea that eventually Jesus will return and he will make the world anew. This is what drives a lot of Christians. And so a lot of Christians believe that this crusade is really the end of the world. It's a final battle between the believers and the non-believers.

And Jesus will return to Jerusalem in order to fight on behalf of the believers and us. ushering a new world order. People actually believe this. Adventurism, romanticism, okay? Shivery. Shiverry means, we didn't discuss this, but it's important that you know. Shivery is a court of honor among knights.

The chivalry, the principle, a lot of the principle is loyalty to your Lord. So if your Lord goes off on a crusade, you have to join him. You have to be loyal to your master, to your Lord. fanatism, and glory. Why am I listening this? Because guys, these reasons are also what drives

the Europeans into the new world. Later on, we will be discussing the age of exploration where the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French, the British, they go into the new world. And they're going into the new world for these reasons. And a lot are going forward with religious fever. religious fever and religious energy, okay? So it's important that you understand

the complexity and diversity of reasoning. Okay, so as I mentioned, the year 1095, Pope Urban II declares the first crusade. But over the course of next 20 years, there'll be a series of crusades to maintain the Holy Land, okay? And it's a very complicated process because it's not being organized okay it's very much a grassroots movement basically local lords are the ones organizing these crusades and all and often

peasants will go by themselves okay and as you can imagine as you can see it's a very long way to Jerusalem and a lot will get killed along along the way right in the first crusade the first crusade is extremely successful because at this point in in history the Muslims don't really care about Jerusalem. It's not that important to them. So the Crusaders are able to take Jerusalem and they establish something called the Crusader states. And it's very, very impressive that they do so

because they're completely surrounded by Muslims and by enemies. But because of the religious fanatism, they will maintain these crusader states for the next 20 years. Okay, so the yellow are crusader states. And as you can see, the white is all Muslim territory. All right. In 1099, they take Jerusalem.

And as I mentioned, there's a lot of religious fanatism going on. When the crusaders take Jerusalem, they do so with vengeance. They kill all the Muslims, they kill all the Jews. They basically killed as many people as possible in the city. Before the siege, the Thadamids, who were in control of the city, they actually expelled the Christians because they were afraid that the Christians would help the crusaders from inside. So no Christians were killed, but a lot of Jews, a lot of Muslims were killed. It was a very, very bloody event, and the Christians celebrate this. For them, this is righteous.

to kill the enemy for the glory of God, it is righteous killing. This contrast with the year 1187 when the Muslim leader named Saladin, okay? Saladin is considered one of the greatest warriors in human history. He celebrated both by Christians and Muslims. He takes Jerusalem without killing any Jews, Christians, or Muslims, okay? He does so peacefully. And again, what's important for us to remember is, that historically Christianity has been a very violent religion.

And Muslims, there's a lot of violence, but it tends to be much more peaceful, open, inclusive than Christianity, okay? I'm not talking about today, but I'm talking about historically this has been true. Once they control Jerusalem, there are five major military orders of the Crusaders. You've probably heard of the Knights Templar,

They're the most famous, but you also have a group called the Tautonic Knights, who will go on to found a place called Prussia, which will unite Germany. Okay, so I want you guys to remember the Tautonic Knights because they will form a basis of Persian society, which will then unite Germany into modern-day Germany. They come from different places in Europe, and that's where there are five different military orders, okay? The Knights Templars are the most famous, and they become over time extremely influential and powerful. The reason why is they're really the first multinational organization in Europe. So they were meant to protect pilgrims along the way to Jerusalem. What they really did was pilgrims would give their money to the temple. for safekeeping and then when they got to Jerusalem the Templars would give them

money back okay so they were a bank and as you can imagine as a bank they were able to make a lot of investments they were able to trade and as such because they're bankers and their traders they are much more sophisticated well educated and cosmopolitan than the Catholic Church right the Catholic Church is in an imperial bureaucracy it only cares about maintaining orthodoxy over Europe but the nice Templars they are bankers they're traders also once they take over Jerusalem and now they have to govern the city they recognize that you need to work with Jews and Muslims okay because Jews and Muslims have these business connections

all around the Muslim world and they're surrounded by Muslims so what will happen over time is the night Templars will welcome back Jews and Muslims into Jerusalem and over time what will happen is not only will these temples become much more tolerant but they will start to learn from the Muslims and the Jews and they will pick up better practices from these other religions also at this at this in Jerusalem are Christians who are considered heretics by the Catholic Church these are Christians who disagree with the Holy Trinity and with other concepts and And that's why they went over to the Muslim world.

So what the time Templars are doing is, they're absorbing all this diverse religious belief. And as such, they become essentially free thinkers. They become, a lot of the religion now is based on reason and logic. Because that's really the only way that you can manage this religious diversity. Does that make sense?

All right. So the night Templars really become one of the basis for modern Europe but as you can imagine this changes these changes will come to conflict with the Catholic Church and as a result in the year 1307 the Catholic Church begins to persecute the night Templars they burn the leader Jack de Molle at the stake okay they disband the organization but by disbanding the organization you drive the organization underground, okay? And a lot of their beliefs will start to spread throughout Europe

and it will incubate the Protestant Reformation and they will actually even influence the American Revolution, okay? We'll discuss this later when we get to the American Revolution. The reason for Jack Dumaire being burned is the Catholic Church accuses them of being Satan worshippers. All right? There's no evidence that they were Satan worshippers, but they were definitely three thinkers. They were definitely religiously tolerant and that went against the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church. Does that make sense, guys? Okay? So, so the other Templars, I want you guys to remember, we'll be discussing them later on in the semester. This is just a quick introduction. All right, let's continue. All right.

Now, there are three different directions of the crusades going on at the same time. The first direction is to recapture Jerusalem. The second is to reclaim Spain from the Muslims okay at this point in history Spain is called Al-Andalas and you guys can still go to Spain and see a lot of this architecture okay it's beautiful it is extremely creative it and it's very powerful okay so this is and Adelaus the architecture this is some of some of their buildings Spain is is one most beautiful countries in the world definitely visit if you have a chance okay okay this is a mosque so Spain again was for the longest time the most

wealthy cosmopolitan innovative place in Europe because there's open and inclusive there were a lot of Jews there were a lot of Christians and Muslims all working together in other lengths okay this is a process that will take about 20 years where the where Europe will come and slowly conquer all of Spain, okay? But this is also part of the crusade. I won't go into the history, but as you can see, it takes some time. All right, the last thing about the Crusades is they were also focused internally against the centers.

And there were quite a few dissenters throughout this history, okay? So let's go over some of the major groups. There are, guys, there are hundreds, hundreds of different groups. I'm only going to go through some of them, okay? The first group I want to talk about are the big wins and the beguards, okay? The big ones refers to women, the baguards refers to men. How they come into conflict with the church is they want to restore early Christianity. They want to restore the heart and soul of Christianity as a religion of humility and poverty.

So they live lives of extreme poverty and charity. They themselves live very simple lives and they give as much they get everything that they have to Other people. Okay, so think of the story of the young man who approaches Jesus and Jesus tells him to give up everything Well, that's what they do a lot of them are pretty wealthy people and they give up everything in order to celebrate Christianity Their problem is first of all they defy the authority of the church. Okay, so they film form their own communities The second problem is if these guys are living simple lives this contrast with the clerics right who often fat wealthy and corrupt so it's kind of embarrassing so they were

persecuted all right then you have a people called the Waltisians who also preached a life of poverty the founder Peter Waldo was actually son of a very wealthy merchant who gave everything up in order to live in in poverty and practice the Christian faith. Their problem though is they believe that the Pope is the devil, okay? The Catholic Church, it is evil because it's corrupting true Christianity. And as a result, a lot of them get burned at the stake, okay? There is a crusade against them and they get decimated and destroyed.

But they're still around even today, okay? A lot of their beliefs are still around today. The main focus of the Eternal Crusade is something called the Albigenesian crusade, which lasts about 20 years. So this is complicated. But in seven France, in a place called Albi, this community practices something called Catharism. Catharism is actually a pretty diverse belief, okay? But its main idea is this. They believe in dualism.

They believe that this world that we live in, it was created by the devil. Why? Because this world is one of pain, one of torment, one of suffering. And there's no way that the true God would create a world like this. But the devil creates this world, and what he did was he stole souls from heaven, and souls are pure, right? And he puts these souls into our bodies. and that's what gives rise to humans. So we are these pure divine souls in these corrupt, ugly, painful bodies.

So the goal of life is to discover that we are imprisoned and escape our bodies and return to heaven through good works, through beliefs, through knowledge, okay? So these people are also considered Gnostics. Okay. Their problem is not only are they heresy, but they have their own church structure. Okay? They have their own church structure and this church structure is extremely open, tolerant, and inclusive. There are women inside the hierarchy, but they're also Jews inside the hierarchy.

And what's important for us to remember is this is a belief system. a belief system in which there aren't that many people, but they're deeply admired by the community because they call themselves good Christians. They practice a life of simplicity, of poverty, and they are kind and charitable to everyone. So the entire community sees them as good neighbors, okay? So when the Pope declares a crusade against these cathars,

what happens is the entire community rallies around them and tries to protect them. Obviously, this is a community that is being besieged by European knights and they will get killed. What's amazing is, while the community is protecting them, and they know that the Crusades or only wants to kill the Cathars, not the Catholics, they're Catholics, the Crusade doesn't want to kill them,

but they're willing to sacrifice your lives to protect the Cathars, but also a lot of them convert to Catholicism knowing that they will die because they are so disgusted by the Crusades, so discussed by the Catholic Church, and they feel such a strong emotional bond with the Cathars. Okay? So this is a very violent process, but it does not destroy Catholicism. Why? Because these Cathars don't care if they die.

Remember, we are inside corrupt bodies. So when we are martyred, we will go straight to heaven. So when they're burned at the stake, they go willingly, they go happily. And this stuns their neighbors, the community, but it also frightens the Catholic Church, because they know you can't beat people like this. And if you keep on persecuting them, their religion will spread. So the Catholic Church adopts two new strategies to deal with them, okay? The first is they initiate something called the Franciscan order, the friars, founded by the Francis of Assisi.

And this is a brotherhood focused on a life of humility and poverty, doing good works, right? Just as Jesus said. The thing, though, is they're within the church hierarchy. They obey the Pope, and the Catholic didn't obey the Pope. The Waltisians thought the Pope was the devil. The main invention, the main response is something called the Dominican Order. So you might have heard of the Jesuits, right? The Jesuits were created in order to persecute people during the Protestant Reformation.

Well, the Dominican order was created just like as a Jesuits in order to deal with the Cathar heresy. These are extremely well-educated people who will now use the power of the pen rather than the power of the sword to try to crush the heresy. What's important for us to remember is these people who join the Inquisition, the crusade, they do so out of the pureness, the goodness of their own heart. The cathars have been led astray. It is their responsibility to educate them and to save their souls before they burn in hell

for all the turners. They do so with compassion, with generosity, with mercy. And so they're fanatical about it. They are absolutely convinced that cathars have been misled by the devil. So what they will do is they will go and interview cathars and the entire community. Okay. Now, before the community wanted to protect the cathars, so they will lie on behalf of the Carthars, okay? But with the power of the pen, you're able to write everything down.

If you're able to take testimony, think of a police interrogation, you know exactly. you know exactly who's lying and who's telling the truth. So they were really quickly able to identify who was a cathar and to isolate that person. Okay? And the power of the pen, this interrogation method, was far more effective than the Crusades. Right. So this is part of something called the medieval inquisition, and this is something that will repeat itself during the Spanish Inquisition.

in the inquisition against the Protestants, okay? Does that make sense? So again, there's this stereotype or this misconception that the inquisition was a violent act. But there was very little violence, and the reason why is the Catholic Church, the doctrine forbids them from spilling blood. But this was a very thorough, very effective way

to deal with heretics, okay? All right. So what brings the Crusades to an end? Why did the Catholic Church start to lose power? Okay, so a lot of their power derives from the belief that they represent God, the legitimacy, right? Well, starting in the 14th century, there are a series of crisis. Remember that for 300 years, Europe was in the medieval warm period. The weather was good, but guess what?

weather will change over time so starting year 13 or 3 the little ice age begins basically it rains every day and it's very cold so if you are a good Christian what do you think well you read the Bible you know the Bible and you know this is the flood Noah's flood God is angry at you guys you guys committed sin who do you sin against probably the Cathars probably the Waldisians probably those who like good lives and you know they like good lives but you kill them anyway okay This leads to something called the Great Famine of 1315 or 1317.

All right. And then this will lead to something called the 100 Years' War between France and England. Okay? So all of Europe right now is they're either starving or they're at war. And then this will create banantries. So you have these mercenary groups, basically these packs of young men who go around killing people. And what does it, the final thing is something called a Black Death. the black death which lasts from 1346 to 1353 this will kill at least half of the

European population okay at least half of the European population all right so let's look at the black death all right it starts in a place called Kyrgyzstan today in Central Asia and because of something called the Pax Mangalaka remember we last class we talked about the Pax Mangalaka right this disease was able to spread very quickly throughout the world And because Europe at this time, it's poor, people at war, people are starving, the plague decimates the population. Because people's immune systems are very weak, right? At least half of the people die.

And at this point, people have lost faith in the Catholic Church. And so now you have rebellions going on. Also, and this is really important, the Catholic Church in 13th century. it splits apart. It's in November 1045, the Catholic Church split away from the Orthodox Church. But in 1378, the Catholic Church itself divides into two. There are now two popes. The first pope is in Rome, and he's supported by the countries in blue,

which is Sweden, Denmark, England, Poland, Hungary, and Italy itself. But you also have a pope in Evanan who is supported by France, which is a rising power in Europe at this time. Okay? So this causes people to lose more faith in the Catholic Church. So now you start to have these rebellions going on. So you have something called the Ducinians, and what they argue for, this is basically a revolutionary party.

They argue for the fall of the church, the fall of feudalism, and they want to create a egalitarian society. So in other words, these are proto-communists. Even at this stage in human history, people are longing for, they're nostalgic for a time when humans were free, open, and egalitarian. They want to destroy the hierarchy. They want to destroy the feudal order. This is John Wycliffe.

He is an Englishman. He is a theologian. Why they respected? but he was critical of the church and he wrote a lot of books promoting reform in the church he believed that the priest had too much power he believed that God should be returned to the people and so he himself translated the Bible from Latin into the vernacular into English so that ordinary people can read it okay the eventually the church deemed him a heritage

They call him a heretic, but the problem is at this point he's dead. So what they did was this. They dug up his body, and then they burned him out the stake, because that's what you do to heretics. He was already dead, but they burned him anyway. John Husse is a check. He was in a place called Bohemia, and he was preaching the same things. And as a result, they decided to call him a heretic and burn him at the stake.

But this will lead to something called the Husig War, when the local bohemians will challenge the authority of the Catholic Church. Eventually, this rebellion, this war will be crushed by the Catholic Church, but this will give way to another reformer by the name of Martin Luther. Martin Luther will start something called the Protestant Reformation, and this will end the authority of the Catholic Church in northern Europe and begin a new age for Europe. All right?

So we'll discuss Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation next week. Okay. So let us conclude by answering the three questions. What are the Crusades? Why did they happen? Why did they stop? The Crusades, in the Western imagination, it's no different from the jihad in the Muslim imagination.

It is a religious war. It's challenging all that religious energy against your opponent. And the Crusades, even though technically they end in 1290, they will benefit themselves in the age of exploration and in the conquest of the new world which is something we'll discuss later on right why did it happen as I discussed it happened because the Catholic Church had a legitimacy problem the church was divided between East and West there were the Muslims in Spain who are more open more cosmopolitan Jerusalem was controlled by the Muslims there was internal dissent so the church was trying to unison unite Christianism in order to channel the religious energy and fanatism in order to consolidate its power and authority over Europe. And why do they stop?

Well, they stop mainly because Europe found itself in internal turmoil in the 14th century. But you can also argue, and I'll show you later on, they never really stopped, okay? It's still going on today. The wars in the Middle East that you're seeing on the news, it's the war that you're seeing on the news, really still part of the crusading mentality. All right. Okay. Okay, so I know this is a lot, but any questions?

Let's try to clarify some things that you didn't really understand. Yep. Okay. Sure. All right, let's talk about the Inquisition, okay? All right, the Inquisition. Sorry, let me, why can I open this? Oh, okay.

All right, good. All right, so let me go over the ecosystem because it's very technical, okay? So in Europe at this time, there are two types of authority. There's something called clerical authority and something called secular authority. Clerical just means the church, secular just means the nobility, the prince, who is in charge of that area. So the clerical authority passes judgment on you. It's only responsible for your spiritual life, not your physical life. The secular authority only cares about your physical life, not your spiritual life.

That's where the division is. So the secular authorities are those who have the power to kill you. The secular authority are those who have the right, who have the power to declare you a heretic or unorthodox. So what's happening during the Inquisition, okay? So the Inquisition is trying to figure out the truth, okay, or the soul, right? Because it is possible that your religion, for example, if you're cathar, that you can lie. Why?

Because this word is fake. Who cares? I'm fake, you're fake. As long as your soul is pure, that's what matters. So you try to look for these cathars, but they wouldn't tell you the truth. But not even that, but the community was also protecting them. So what would happen is they knew you were gonna come in and ask questions. You would basically like the police, you want to interrogate them, right?

Well, before then, the community would get together and make up a lot of lies, okay, to protect the minority of pathors within that community. These are neighbors trying to protect each other. Okay, so what they would do is they would have these informants who tell them, Maybe one and three, okay, person one and three in this community of ten, they are cathars So now the problem is how do you find them out? Well, what you do is like the police you would interrogate them individually and Because the Dominicans were well educated they could write everything down, okay? They could write everything down And they were tenacious. They were persistent because again they are

they think they're doing God's work. This is a crusade. They're trying to save people, right? So it's possible they stay in the community for like a year, and they might interview you once a week, right? If you're lying to them, eventually your story will fall apart. Okay, doesn't make sense. And the trick is to make sure that you separate one in three from two, four, five, six.

Okay, do you understand? Because during a crusades, you didn't separate. them you killed everyone okay which is problematic because a lot of Christianers didn't want to kill Catholics they want to kill cathars and then and then the Pope said God will know his own right I mean like let God decide who's a real cathar who's a real Catholic all right but but you know that that but that was that felt unjust and unnecessary right so this was a much more precise methodical way to figure out one in three and then you burn them at the stake

okay to send a message to the community, right? Because what you really try and do is threaten everyone else to cooperate. Okay? And then eventually over time, people recognize that resistance is futile. These people are so persistent, they'll figure out the truth. And then they'll punish the cathars. So there's really no point in resisting.

And again, remember, this is really important. the cathars are only a small minority of people in southern France in France okay before they were killing everyone in southern France and this was uniting all southern France against the Catholic Church now because of the inquisition they're able to be much more precise does that make sense Eva okay great yep any more questions great question any more questions okay yeah okay escape-building all right So in the Jewish religion, in Judaism, there's a ritual where the sins of the community will be put on a goat, okay?

So basically all the sins of the community of that year, it will all be placed in a goat. And then they will let the goat run away, or they might sacrifice the goat, in order to cleanse the community of the sins, okay? So the idea of scapegoating is to blame someone else for your troubles, okay, or to divert people attention to something else that distracts them, right? So remember, in the idea of feudalism,

the conflict is between the small nobility, right, and a large peasantry. The peasants often were enslaved, by the nobility they were basically called serfs and that's gonna imagine people would get angry okay they get frustrated and if they rebelled the nobility would have a problem okay first of all there were a lot of peasants so the nobility might get killed but the problem is this is your economy right this is your property you don't want to burn on your own property all right

so the idea of scapegoating is this You have Jews who work as middlemen. They're the tax collectors, they're the people who manage the land, they're the merchants. So what you would do is this. You would now and then let the peasants kill the Jews. And you think of this as a ritual sacrifice. Just as in Judaism, they would ritual sacrifice a scapegoat in order to cleanse. the community of its sins right well you would allow a ritual sacrifice of certain

Jews in order to cleanse the peasants of their anger does that make sense like like I know this is hard and I and I know this is disgusting and wrong but it is a very powerful political tool and so you will see the idea of skipgoating throughout human history right so now that once the peasants have satisfied their anger on the Jews, they go back to work. Does that make sense, guys? All right. So, Echo, is that

clear? Okay, great. Great question. Okay, any more questions? Okay, no. So, in this religion, this world doesn't matter. What matters is once you die. Okay, so everyone, while alive, is thinking, like,

how do I ensure a peaceful, happy, afterlife. And the Catholic Church is what allows you to have a happy afterlife. But if you piss off the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church can tell you that, nope, you're going to burn in hell. So the priority then is to be on good terms of the Catholic Church. And that's how you ensure eternal salvation. Okay? Yeah, it's a religion.

It's a belief system. It's a worldview, okay? Remember, religion is the culture, which is the worldview, right? And this is what people believe. So in China, people believe that if I get good grades in school, I'll go to good university and then I'll have a really good life, right? That's a religion, that's a belief system. It's not necessarily true, but that's what people believe.

and that's what drives your actions. That's why your parents make you study so hard. All right. Good. Is that clear? Okay, great. Any more questions? Great questions, guys. But any more questions?

Yeah, so I need you guys to really know this material because we will have to use this material in future classes. Okay, so next week we start the Renaissance. The Renaissance will take us to the Protestant Reformation.