During the Middle Ages pilgrimages became popular both as an act of devotion to God and as a form of retribution for sins or even crimes (see box, "Punishment, Prison, and Pilgrimage"). A favorite site for pilgrims from France was Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where the apostle James had supposedly been buried. In Europe as a whole, the leading spot was Rome, not only as the center of the papacy, but also because of its association with the saints and martyrs of the early Church. Yet one place exceeded the glory even of Rome. This was the place where Jesus himself had walked, and where many events from the Bible had occurred: the Holy Land, or Palestine, specifically the city of Jerusalem.
For centuries, the Holy Land had belonged to the Muslims, or Saracens (SAR-uh-sunz) as many Europeans called them. The Arab caliphate had respected the right of Christian pilgrims to visit Jerusalem, a city holy to Islam as well; yet the Seljuks had proven less tolerant than the Arabs and had begun harassing pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Therefore when Alexis I Com-nenus sent a request to Urban II for military help against the Turks, Urban saw it as something much bigger: a chance to reclaim the Holy Land for Christ, to bring the Orthodox Church back within the Catholic fold—and to make the pope the most powerful man in the world. Furthermore, he needed a foreign war to occupy the energies of the Normans.
World History
