The Crusaders and the ChurchIntroductionThis research paper will discuss the Crusades as a typical phenomenon of Western Christianity in the Middle Ages. This article aims to study the motivating factors and some positive and negative consequences of the Crusades. It also determines whether the Crusades advanced the cause of Christ and whether they were representative of a Christian worldview. The Crusades are well-known events of the Middle Ages. The Crusades began in 1095. This was the time when Christian armies in Western Europe responded to calls from Pope Urban II to enter into battle against Muslim forces in the Holy Land. Once the objective of the initial Crusade was achieved, which was the capture of Jerusalem in 1099; the attacking Christians established many Latin Christian states. In response to this achievement by Christians, Muslims in Jerusalem also declared the outbreak of a holy war, called "jihad", in order to maintain control and power over the city. Subsequently, during the 3rd Crusade, relations between the Christian associates and the Crusaders deteriorated in the Byzantine Empire and this ended with the sack of Constantinople, in 1204. By the end of the 13th century, the emerging Mamluk dynasty in Egypt gave power. ultimate estimate for the Crusaders, overturning the coastal hold of Acre and motivating European intruders out of Syria and Palestine in 1291. After the First Crusade, the success of subsequent battles turned into a dismal failure. The sentence that the C...... middle of paper ......O'Neill, JJ The Crusades: A Response to Islamic Aggression. Comparative Review of Civilizations, 63(63), 2010. Data taken from: https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/CCR/article/viewFile/13006/12870 Pringle, D. The churches of the crusaders Kingdom of Jerusalem: Volume 3, The City of Jerusalem: A Corpus. Cambridge University Press, (2007). Data taken from: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X0jH6VPi4-gC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Crusaders+and+the+Church&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rGveUpDvKseQ7Abfr4HIAQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=The% 20Crusaders%20and%20the%20Church&f=falseScham, S. The Legacy of the Crusades. Archaeological Institute of America, Vol. 55, no. 5. Archeology Magazine, 2002. Data taken from: http://archive.archaeology.org/0209/abstracts/crusades.htmlTyerman, Christopher. Crusades: a very short introduction. Oxford, GBR: Oxford University Press, 2006.