The Rise and Fall of the Crudsades Through Vatican Political Hegemony
Graduation Date
Fall 2011
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program Name
Humanities
First Reader
Leslie Ross, PhD
Second Reader
Martin Anderson, JD, PhD
Abstract
Traditionally, the Crusades have been viewed as occurring between the 1095 speech given by Pope Urban II at Clermont until the fall of Acre in 1291, yet recent scholarship has shown this to be inaccurate. By shifting the focus from a chronological start to a definitional origin, this thesis will conclude that Crusading became obsolete by the mid-sixteenth century. When the Crusades did end. it was not in a final climatic battle rather a series secular of border wars between Empires. The Vatican lost the ability to mobilize soldiers yet the rhetoric of a Crusade survived in the collective memory of secularized nation states as a common political and cultural mythos.