The Real Motivations

The Crusades are often taught as religious wars — which they were, partly. But the real motivations were far more tangled. Behind the banners of faith sat ambitious men with worldly goals: nobles hungry for land, merchants hungry for trade, and a papacy hungry to reassert its authority over a fractious Europe.

Pilgrims and zealots filled the rank and file, but the campaigns would never have launched without the economic and political calculations of leaders who found religion a useful flag to wrap around the enterprise.