At the same time, the Crusades were consciously conceived of as a new means of earning salvation from the Church. This was war as an act of piety; its purpose, as spelled out by Pope Urban II in 1095 during the Council of Clermont, the ecclesiastical gathering that initiated the First Crusade, was to grant forgiveness of sins to those who would fight against the Church’s enemies. “I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds … to destroy that vile race [the Muslims] from the lands of our friends,” Urban demanded of the priests, knights, and princes gathered in the small French town.
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