Just a few years before Pope Urban II called the First Crusade, the Seljuq Turks had conquered Nicaea, the same city where, 750 years prior, Constantine had convened the church’s First Ecumenical Council. The Seljuq Turks were Sunni Muslims, and they had taken Nicaea from the Byzantine emperor, a Christian. It was he, the Byzantine emperor, who asked Pope Urban II for help defending his lands at the Council of Piacenza in 1095. In other words, Muslims were actively attacking and conquering Christians, and the First Crusade was a defensive effort.
First crusade was defensive efforts.
