"The Crusades are narrowly definable as Christian penitential war pilgrimages, authorized by popes and fought by volunteers who were privileged in various ways." Many referred to them as holy wars because the word crusade is derived from the Latin word crux, meaning cross. The Crusades never succeeded with as much good as their supporters had hoped, but they did achieve goals in other areas. In the first three Crusades, which are considered the most important, many people lost their lives and the Christian religion was looked down upon and disgraced because of what occurred. Because of some of the atrocities committed during the Crusades a stereotype was set up about Christians, leading people to think that Christians are all alike and will always be as merciless as they were before. This stereotype is still believed by some people of other religions today.
             The Crusades began after the Arab conquests of the Mediterranean area in AD six hundred. These places were mainly all the places that Jesus had lived, which made them precious to the Christians, but they had been under Arab control until the one thousands.
             One such place was Jerusalem, which was overall the most important to the Christians because that is where Jesus died and was resurrected. The Arabs allowed the Christians to come freely and visit Jerusalem until the early 1000s when the Turks swept through and captured all that the Arabs once had owned. In the 1090s Alexius Comnenus, emperor of the Byzantine Empire, asked Pope Urban II for help in fighting the Turks. Pope Urban II had a big influence on all the people of Europe at that time because the church was held up so highly. Urban viewed Alexius' appeal as an opportunity to win glory for the Church, so he called a great assembly in France and said that "it is God's will to rescue the Holy Land," motivating thousands to join the cause.
             The First Crusade began after Pope Urban...