nication and deposition.
In the Middle Ages, all knowledge of the natural and the spiritual worlds was thought to be revealed by Scripture, and no scientific discoveries had yet caused people to question the accuracy of the Bible. Christians erected shrines where they worshiped passionately the relics of saints. These physical and natural representations of divinity were believed to possess the spiritual powers of the saints themselves. Therefore, many Europeans went on pilgrimages to visit the shrines of the saints. A constant stream of pilgrims made the difficult journey from Europe to Jerusalem, the city of the Holy Sepulcher.
The nobility, as well as the common people, were infused with religious fervor. Like the Old Testament warriors, the noblemen of Europe warred constantly against the enemies of their faith. The nobles had a passion for war, and their justification for this passion was chivalry. Chivalry combined the love of battle and the love of God into a lifestyle that was both physical and spiritual. Many church leaders realized that private wars among the feudal barons threatened the peaceful, prosperous civilization they envisioned, with the church at its head. When the idea of the Crusades emerged the church recognized an opportunity to achieve political, economic, and religious objectives: "a crusade was possible only after the Church had prepared the ground for it by working out a theory of holy war and by creating a class of Christian knights" (Mayer 20).
The Crusades were a European Christian campaign against the Islamic forces in the Holy Land. In 330 A.D., Emperor Constantine I divided the Roman empire into two parts: the Western Empire governed from Rome, and the Eastern Empire governed by Constantinople. Over the next seven centuries, the two empires drifted apart. The Eastern Empire (known as Byzantium) prospered, became increasingly independent of Rome, and was greatly influenced by Gr...