"[footnoteRef:6] At the time of The Crusades the relations between the West and Byzantium is reported to have been characterized "as a clash of cultures." [footnoteRef:7] The Greeks are reported to have seen themselves as "civilized superiors to the barbaric and violent westerners." [footnoteRef:8] However, it is reported that the Western Christians did not have a monopoly on brutality, as "the Byzantines were capable of extraordinary unpleasantness. he death of

One thing not even Madden can excuse is that cultural and social exchanges between Christians did not lead to compassion towards members of other faiths, particularly Jews. In fact, the crusading impulse invariably, more so with every successive crusade, brought examples of the persecution of Jews in the region. The first crusade almost immediately spawned mass killings of Jews down the Rhine en route to Jerusalem, supposedly because Jews' wealth

.. Popular understanding of the crusades nowadays tends to think in terms of a great contest between faiths fuelled by religious fanaticism. This perception is bound up with modern sensibilities about religious discrimination, and... It is a perspective which, at least as far as the First Crusade is concerned, needs to be rejected. Bull, 1999, p. 16/17) The Crusades The first crusade was initiated when Alexis I, the leader of the Byzantine Empire

Queen Isabella initially challenged the basis of Columbus' right to enslave the subjects entrusted to her by the Pope. 4. How did Spain explain the purpose of the Encomienda system? According to their view, the Indians were to be rightfully Christianized by Spanish forces. Since they resisted their efforts, the Encomienda suggested that enslavement was a tool necessitated to overcome the Indians' reluctance to work and their "laziness." Their enslavement into

Saladin and the Christian Crusaders Saladin, or Salah al-Din, or Selahedin, was a twelfth century Kurdish Muslim general and warrior from Tikrit, in what is currently northern Iraq. Saladin founded the Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt. The Muslim leader was renowned in both the Muslim and Christian worlds because of his leadership and his military prowess. He was also seen as a chivalrous figure who showed mercy during his war against the

William of Occam formulated the principle of Occam's Razor, which held that the simplest theory that matched all the known facts was the correct one. At the University of Paris, Jean Buridan questioned the physics of Aristotle and presaged the modern scientific ideas of Isaac Newton and Galileo concerning gravity, inertia and momentum when he wrote: ...after leaving the arm of the thrower, the projectile would be moved by an impetus