Continuing today with William Bramley's 'The Gods of Eden'...

..The Crusades got off to a good, but bloody, start. The Christians captured Jerusalem in the summer of 1099. Although the knights and peasants who marched under Christian banners were extolled to practice high virtues and chivalry, they frequently degenerated into butchery and other acts of viciousness. When the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099, they murdered many of the non-Christian survivors in a slaughter that claimed the lives of more than 10,000 victims.

Not only were the Crusaders killing Muslims, they were also killing Jews, who were considered by many Christians to be as heathen as the Muslims. The slaughter of Jews began even before the first Crusade to the Holy Land. In the year 1095, Christian factions started murdering Jews in Europe. A genocidal wave in the German Rhineland was the first major episode; it was sparked by unsubstantiated rumors that Rhineland Jews were using Christian children in their religious sacrifices. Obliterating the Jews became an important element of the Crusades, and the massacres continued even after the Crusades to Jerusalem had ended.

The Crusades had another important effect on Europe. Several decades before the launching of the First Crusade, Pope Gregory VII had attempted to put the Roman Catholic Church under greater centralized control. Prior to Gregory's effort, the Catholic Church in Europe was a loosely-knit organization run primarily by non clergymen; the type of organization envisioned by Christianity's earliest founders. After Pope Urban II ascended to the Papacy and rallied all good Christians to fight the unholy Muslims, Christian princes and supporters began pledging allegiance directly to the Pope, thereby hastening the centralization effort attempted earlier by Pope Gregory VII. The power of the Roman Papacy increased as the holy wars dragged on and growing numbers of people proclaimed their Papal loyalty.

Behind the Crusades lay the Brotherhood. The Christian Crusaders were led primarily by two powerful knight organizations with intimate Brotherhood ties: the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights of the Temple ("Knights Templar"). https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2021/04/part-5-gods-of-edenmohammedmessiah.html