Crusades tended to enhance the prestige and authority of the papacy and the power of European monarchs, they also led to The Crusades and the Hildebrandine reformation. increased knowledge of the East, to the rapid development of commerce, to the introduction of new industries, to the rapid decline of the influence of the feudal nobility, and to the rapid development of town life (see Commune). At the same time the Hildebrandine reformation was having an immense influence upon the intellectual condition of Europe. The 12th century saw the establishment of many new monastic orders (see Monasticism), and at the same time a remarkable speculative and literary revival (see Scholasticism). This movement owed not a little of its success to the influence of the Crusades, which stirred up intellectual as well as commercial activity. This intellectual activity, as well as the fruits of commercial expansion, were—since learning was still a monopoly of the clerical order—weapons in the hands of the papacy, which in the 12th century attained the height of its power, if not of its pretensions. It is, indeed, impossible to exaggerate the influence of the Roman Church upon the development of Europe at this period. The popes, in fact, represented Europe in a sense that could not be predicated of the emperors; the terror of their spiritual power, their vast wealth derived from the tribute of all the West, their unique experience of international affairs, and—in the case of the great popes of this epoch—the superiority of their minds and characters, made them not only the spiritual rulers of Europe, but the effective centres of whatever political unity it possessed. As a Byzantine observer was to observe of Innocent III., they had become the successors of the Caesars rather than of Peter (see Papacy).
Nowhere were the beneficial effects of the Crusades seen more clearly than in France. The smaller fiefs were steadily absorbed by the greater lordships, which in their turn fell victims to the royal power. It might almost be said that “modern France is a creation of the Crusades.” Growth of the royal power in France. The effects of the crusading movement were felt in France as early as the reign of Louis VI. (1108–1137). Aided by his able minister Suger, Louis managed before his death to add to the possessions of his house the Île de France and a prospective claim to Poitou and Aquitaine. Under his successor Louis VII. (1137–1180) the consolidation movement was checked owing to the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine (after her divorce from Louis VII.) to Henry II of England. By the addition of his wife’s lands (Gascony and Guienne) to those which he had already inherited from his father and mother (Normandy, Anjou, Touraine and Maine) Henry was enabled to form the powerful though short-lived Angevin empire. But the lost ground was rapidly recovered by Philip Augustus (1180–1223), who took advantage of the weakness and folly of John of England, and before 1215 had united firmly to France Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Touraine. Louis VIII. and Louis IX. adhered firmly to the policy of Philip IV., and in 1258, by the treaty of Paris, Henry III. of England recognized the loss of Poitou. There thus remained to England out of the vast continental domains of Henry II. only Gascony and Guienne.
The rest of Europe was also in various degrees affected by the Crusades. While Spain was occupied in a crusade of her own against the Moors and gradually driving them into Granada, Germany, Italy, and to some extent England, were interested in, and influenced by, the Crusades General results of the Crusades. against the Turks. During the absence of many of the nobles in the East the growth of towns and the development of the mercantile class proceeded without interruption. The trading classes demanded strong governments and equal justice, and vigorously supported the monarchs in their suppression of feudalism.
During the 12th and 13th centuries the Crusades thus proved a large factor in the commercial prosperity of the Italian maritime states, an “open door” between East and West was secured, and reinforcements from Europe were poured into Syria as long as the peoples of the West regarded the stability of the Latin kingdom of Syria as a matter of prime importance. During the crusading period a check was placed to the tide of Mahommedan conquest, while to the caliphate the Crusades proved a perpetual drain upon its material resources. To the Mahommedans the possession of the Holy Places by the Christians was as great a humiliation as their desecration by the Mahommedans was to the crusaders. Unfortunately the Crusades led to a disastrous schism between the Byzantine empire and western Christendom, which had calamitous results. The decay of the crusading spirit was a necessary result of the growth of the consolidation of the European nations, but the price paid was the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the Turks in eastern Europe. The Crusades thus not only postponed the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks for some two hundred years, but led, as had already been said, to a vast expansion of commerce, as seen in the rapid growth and development of the Italian cities, and to a striking development of town life.
The Crusades had enormously strengthened the power and prestige of the papacy, and indirectly contributed to its victory over the Empire in the person of Frederick II. From the reign of the emperor Henry IV. to the death of Frederick II. in 1250 the struggle between the Empire The struggle between the Empire and the papacy. and the papacy continued, and is coincident in point of time with the Crusades. The reign of Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190) saw that struggle at its height, and during that reign it became apparent that the emperor’s efforts to unite Italy and Germany under one crown were doomed to failure. The rise and success of the alliance of Italian republics known as the Lombard League no doubt contributed to the success of the papacy, but in their contest with the popes the emperors never had any chance of gaining a permanent victory. Frederick II continued with great energy to attempt the hopeless task of dominating the papacy, but his possession of Sicily only made the popes more determined than ever to establish their predominance in Italy. Frederick’s death in 1250 marked not only the triumph of the papacy in Italy, but also that of feudalism in Germany. He has been called the “most dazzling of the long line of imperial failures,” and with him ends the Empire as it was originally conceived. Henceforward the Holy Roman Empire, which implied the unity of Italy and Germany, and the close alliance of pope and emperor, no longer exists save in name, and its place is taken by a glorified German kingship presiding over a confederation of turbulent German nobles.
Thus with the later years of the 13th century Europe had arrived at the definite close of one epoch and the beginning of another. The period of the Crusades was over, the theory of the Holy Roman Empire had broken down. The period from the beginning of the 14th to the close Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. of the 15th century might well be styled the latter days of medieval Europe.
During the 14th and 15th centuries the idea of regarding Europe as one state in which emperor and pope presided over a number of subordinate kings gave way before the spirit of nationalism and particularism. England, France and Spain were rapidly becoming strong centralized monarchies which stood in striking contrast to the weakened Empire. Partly no doubt owing to the failure of the Empire and papacy to work together, a great impetus had been given to the formation of national monarchies. While Frederick II. had failed, Louis IX. and Philip IV. of France, Ferdinand III. of Castile (1217–1252), James the Conqueror, king of Aragon (1213–1276) and Edward I. of England (1239–1307) succeeded in laying the foundations of strong monarchies which after two centuries of struggles with the dying efforts of feudalism were established on a firm basis. In spite of the intellectual activity and political developments which characterized the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries it remains true that the later middle ages were marked by the decay of those remarkable social and political forces which had been such striking characteristics of the earlier period (see Middle Ages).
Thus the 14th and 15th centuries have characteristics which differentiate them from all preceding and succeeding centuries,
