On this episode of five minutes in church history, we're going to stick with our theme of what's trending,

and this time we'll look at what was trending in the 12th century.

If you were alive during the 11th hundreds, it would have been very hard to miss this thing that was trending.

I've got to tell you, it was not Church History's brightest hour or best today, and it is the Crusades.

The first crusade occurred just before we enter the 12th century.

The first crusade was from 1096 to 1099.

Pope Urban the second issued the call,

and the issue was that Islam had taken control of the holy land.

And there was this sense that, and it's very true, there was a spiritual malays, the church

was in corruption and decline, and there was a sense that that was because God had removed his hand of blessing because the infidels or the Muslims had overtaken

the Holy Land.

And so the Pope issued a call for the armies to gather and retake the

Holy Land. That first crusade, as I mentioned, occurred from 1096 to 1099. It

resulted in the capture of Jerusalem from Islamic forces.

The Crusaders established four crusader states and they constructed castles for their defense.

And this lasted for about three decades, but by the 1130s and on into the 1140s, Muslim forces began

to gain control.

The need was then for a second crusade, and so a second crusade was called for in 1147 and it lasted until 1149.

This was a very intense crusade.

In fact, one crusade army that attacked Damascus in Syria and was a time of

extended warfare there in that city of Damascus, that army alone numbered 50,000 soldiers.

The Crusaders were roundly defeated at Damascus,

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