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I hope my answering this question as a man doesn’t involve me stepping out of my lane. I will welcome any suggestions or edits to correct data or positions taken within the answer.In this answer i talk about some of my problems with the most common gender gap indicator, the WEF Gender gap index, and propose more accurate benchmarks that involve analyzing how many women hold leadership positions on multiple levels in key institutions of power in a country.Some context: My country Pakistan is the second lowest ranked country in the gender gap index. Only war torn Yemen scores below us at the moment. That’s right, out of the 144 nations on the planet, we are at 143. While some marginal progress has been made with the onset of democracy and inclusion of female voters in the political progress, at the moment it’s quite possible that we are the worst possible place on earth for women in terms of gender gap.Back when I was researching Pakistan’s history of communist movements for an answer on Quora, I ran into an interesting article by Marxist Nighat Said Khan. She described one of the most fundamental problems with Marxist movements (in Pakistan at least) with regards to gender: While Marxist movements push for more female empowerment and mobilization of women as fellow comrades to participate in the revolutionary effort and later functioning of a communist state, the communist party leadership were sadly devoid of women in key roles. She described the women in Marxist political meetings as “extensions of a tea tray”. Ornamental, silent, still restricted to their traditional “tea pouring” role in the pre-revolutionary society and with no real power in their hands.Which of course, presents us with the insight that even when we have political ideologies that fight for the empowerment of women and the elevation of their role and status in society, that is not the same as actually sharing power with women. Many men will talk benevolently of their feminist credentials and speak for female education, employment and liberation. Those same men would balk at the prospect of having to compete with the now emancipated women for political roles, government positions, jobs and what not.Based on my limited experience with Marxist history in Pakistan, I would say that any meaningful push for a more feminist society is one that strikes at the heart of our current gender problems: One gender holds less power vis a vis the other. And the only way to correct that is to revise our feminist interpretation of success from meeting certain benchmarks on indicators like pay gaps (which are symptoms of a deeper problem, not the root cause), to one where we try to analyze whether our countries actually give power, true power, the kind of power that if wielded can make or break people to women. Power that allows women a say on critical affairs like which direction should our state, society or organization take. Which values should we hold. How do we define right or wrong? If women have the power to influence the answer to these questions in a society, then it can be called a feminist society.But if our society is one that prefers to restrict itself to treating the symptoms only like pay gaps, then that’s evidence to the contrary.The WEF Global Gender Gap report and my issues with itThe report is a treasure trove of hard data across the spectrum of gender issues. The report is structured so that it’s designed to portray 3 core points:1. Gaps vs. levelsDevelopment level of nations is ignored, the only data analysed is whether men and women are afforded the same access to a country’s resources (be it health, food, education etc). So if a poor country has enrollment rates equal for both girls and boys in school, then it will score higher than a richer nation with a gap between enrollment rates of girls and boys. Makes perfect sense, so moving on.2.The Outputs vs Inputs tab is where I start having some issues with the report:Indicators related to country-specific policies, rights, culture or customs—factors that we consider “input” or “means” indicators—are not included in the Index, but they are displayed in the Country Profiles. For example, the Index includes an indicator comparing the gap between men and women in high-skilled jobs such as legislators, senior officials and managers (an outcome indicator) but does not include data on the length of maternity leave (a policy indicator).Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2015This somewhat dispels the holistic feel of the report and I get the sense that if factors like government and private sector policies towards women in the work place are not factored in or when a country’s policies, rights, cultures and customs are not factored in it would lead to abnormalities in the data.I feel like they were left out because the analysts wanted a standardized template or a common benchmark/base level from which to establish comparison between all evaluated nations.But honestly, this just opened up so many abnormalities in their report.I talked about how old authoritarian regimes in Eurasia would have female literacy programs and employment programs but not many top leadership roles for women. Or we would have countries with very generous maternity laws but not much female liberty (Saudi Arabia).Say a Gulf state declares that they will allow 33% of the seats in their parliament to be reserved for women. But the no-driving restriction and the “women must be accompanied by their male guardian” law remains. Point #2 would allow that gulf country to score higher than a country with say, 20% female MPs but with more relaxed laws regarding female drivers and no male guardian restrictions.Similarly, a Marxist state that effectively creates a secular society where women have less restrictions on their clothing, their jobs and their role in society would score less than a Gulf state (with conservative laws for women) which scored higher due to government quotas for female MPs and oil wealth creating an artificial “gender balance” on paper due to large social welfare programs in healthcare.More on this point later.3.Gender equality vs. women’s empowermentThe third distinguishing feature of the Global Gender Gap Index is that it ranks countries according to their proximity to gender equality rather than to women’s empowerment. Our aim is to focus on whether the gap between women and men in the chosen indicators has declined, rather than whether women are “winning” the “battle of the sexes”. Hence, the Index rewards countries that reach the point where outcomes for women equal those for men, but it neither rewards nor penalizes cases in which women are outperforming men in particular indicators in some countries. Thus a country that has higher enrollment for girls rather than boys in secondary school will score equal to a country where boys’ and girls’ enrollment is the same.Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2015It’s almost like they are trying to be politically correct and apologetic to online Mens Rights Activists and the “Not All Men” types. Really weirded out by how specifically they stated this point. Could have done without the stroking of fragile male egos but ok.Here’s my issue with the methodology of the WEF report.It assumes a liberal democracy model of government in some of it’s benchmarks due to its focus on elected officials rather than increasing the scope to other institutions of power like the Judiciary or the Military or Religious Clergy and so on. Which is huge because these institutions can hold a major sway over the political life and society of a country.Take Pakistan for example. A coup prone country where the military holds a huge sway over society and politics. A religious clergy that can organize street level protests and bring pressure to bear on the government when the government tries to pass anti-child marriage, anti-honor killing and anti-rape laws. A judiciary that’s still figuring out it’s role in a democracy and frequently oversteps its bounds to dismiss elected officials.Our elected officials and parliament have pretty decent representation of female officials in terms of MPs and so on. We were the first Muslim country to have a female head of state (Prime Minister Bhutto) and might have another one soon if the ex-PM’s daughter takes up the mantle. So we would score well here but would that matter if real power is being wielded by patriarchal institutions like the military and judiciary?Which brings up another point: Is it really a benchmark of female empowerment if a woman is elected to high office based on her belonging to a political dynasty? That is if she was elected due to the contacts and privilege afforded to her from being the wife/daughter/sister of a powerful male politician rather than an individual recognized for her own achievements.Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2015Take a look at the factors used in Political empowerment index and the weightages assigned to each.Not only are other political insitutions of power like the military, police, civil service beaurucrats, religous bodies, tribal bodies etc not included but the weightages are off in my opinion.Female MP’s often have reserved seats in parliament for them in some developing countries and you can have some pretty patriarchal societies in the middle east and south Asia have a decent number of female MPs but have horrific female empowerment records. Taking my initial point of political patronage and hereditary links further, we would be having female MPs can be due to females of a powerful tribe or caste or political dynasty being elected based on systems of political patronage in their society rather than being elected because the populace has developed a gender neutral mindset where they view merit above gender.If you have a democracy with healthy representation of female politicians, it wont mean much if they were elected due to dynastic and hereditary political links as compared to being elected by a populace that valued their merit and ignored their gender.Also, If you have a parliament with 25% reserved seats for women, it doesn't translate to female empowerment if the parliament is powerless due to a strong military or religious lobby.I find the weightages a bit off too. An equitable 1/3 split between female MPs, cabinet positions and female head of state is better. Or a pyramid structure with steadily increasing weightage the higher up the political ladder you go would make more sense so that your MPs could have 25% weightage, 35% for Cabinet and 40% for head of state.This is to avoid the problem of “token female head of state” where your PM is strongly bound to run according to a male dominated cabinet. There are a lot of inner party workings in Party chairmanship, intra body elections, cabinet positions and electoral seats etc which can only be taken into account by giving higher weightage to BOTH cabinet positions and female head of state. I would argue that even a top weightage to cabinet positions would be more beneficial and we must also consider WHICH cabinet positions are held be women. It doesn't mean much if the female ministers are banished to Ministry of Forestry and Ministry of Culture while the men hold the top portfolios of Foreign affairs, Defense and Finance.Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2015The earlier weightages and factors in Economic participation and Educational attainment somewhat attempt to redress the problems in the political section by expanding the scope of female leadership to non-political office roles like corporate executives ( the report does not indicate whether these are civil and private sector business positions or critical government positions like military top brass).But again, we have a weightage problem: The bulk of the weightages are assigned to wage gaps. Not leadership. Wage parity takes up more than 50% of the economic participation index which is REALLY bad in my opinion.These top weightages should be assigned to last two factors that measure top management positions and professional/technical female workers. Does the report think that a female CEO or top female executives will pay THEMSELVES poorly compared to their male counterparts? The pay gap is a symptom of gender disparity which will automatically resolve itself once you have significant female representation in the top ranks of companies and organizations and they will have the power to decide who gets paid what.And the technical and professional worker roles are important because the WEF report is annually made for the purpose of advising governments on how to effectively and productively utilize their female labor force in the face of growing automation. Automation is effectively killing off several industries where women are the dominant participant. Why would a report that’s designed to advice on how to safe guard female workers in the economy from participation assign such a low weightage to female participation in professional and technical fields? These are the fields with the most safety from automation.The same problem is evident in the education index as well which only measures female rates of enrollment and literacy. Not a sector wise breakdown of which fields women are studying for. Are the STEM sciences of a country actually welcoming of women engineers and scientists? Or are they an All Boys club who think women should stick with the arts and food nutrition?Female literacy by itself wont mean much if women are then going into sectors that are at threat from automation, decreasing their job and financial independence and making them dependent on male workers. Trying to solve the wage gap wont mean much if top leadership decisions have no input from women because the top positions are occupied by men only.I would propose a weightage that skews heavily in favor of the last 2 factors (how many women are in top management positions and how many are working in professional and technical capacities). If you have female managers and hiring managers in large enough numbers, the symptoms like female participation and wage gap will begin to resolve themselves.Similarly, Education needs to factor in which sectors women are studying for. If women are harassed or not welcomed in STEM fields at their schools and universities, then it’s pointless to measure only female literacy because it doesn’t take into account whether female workers are given an equal opportunity to go into fields that will be at low risk from automation.I don’t have much to say about the health weight assignments. It’s pretty obvious they are trying to catch female infanticide and female embryo abortion as well as trying to gauge whether women have the same access to health care as men by checking for gaps in life expectancy. These are important indicators.Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2015I talked about this previously when i criticized the Second Core Factor of the study, the Outputs vs Inputs segment. Basically, the data only takes into account “Outputs” meaning country specific policies towards women are ignored and only certain easily measured, standardized indicators are used to make comparisons.So i’ll bring up the point of country specific policies again.Say you have Country A which provides generous maternity leave and subsidized health care for women but women are required to cover up, not go out without a male guardian etc etc.That country A will score more than a country without generous maternity care but with more social, cultural and political freedom for women.Again, i understand the reason for this was to establish a common base level to allow comparison between states. I just find the base level to be too abnormality prone.Summary of WEF problemsAt the end of the day, the index is still a pretty useful collection of data. It’s core strengths lie along the lines of having a rich abundance of data, a standardized approach which cuts down on the number of factors analyzed to allow meaningful comparison in some ways, a good ability to detect certain forms of gender disparity and some good analysis decisions (the first core factor where they ignored developmental levels of nations to focus exclusively on equal access to current resources by both genders).My issues with the report are over the following few items:Ignoring country specific cultural, social and political policies towards women to focus only on “outputs” (e.g. # of women employed or literate) while useful from a data analysis perspective to standardize the data, opens up a can of worms in that it seriously screws up some of the rankings. A wealthy Gulf state with maternity leave will score higher than a country without it, no matter the policies on women driving or clothing.Left oriented authoritarian regimes with high participation of women in worker force and government positions would score lower than countries with token female leadership and less representation of women in labor and government due to compensating factors like larger health care investments due to oil wealth. This is just one example, but it shows how the index factors and their weightages wont hold up much in reality.The pay gap got too much weightage. More needs to be given to having women in top executive positions. If you have a large enough core of dedicated female leadership at the top in an organization with access to real power and decision making, then symptoms of gender disparity like pay gap and wage gap begin to resolve automatically.Female occupations and educational attainments need to be measured more heavily in professional and technical roles. The current wave of automation sweeping the planet will hit industries previously dominated by female labor. A gender gap will exist in the near future if traditionally female dominated industries get wiped out by automation. Any country looking to combat their gender gap will have to have a sizable portion of their female work force in professional technical roles. The WEF study assigns too low a weight to this factor, preferring to keep the skew towards pay gap.The data methodology is rooted in the western, liberal democracy form of government. Ignoring that several states suffer from political dysfunction. This could mean political power in a state being held largely by a powerful military, a judiciary, religious clergy, a cabal of civil service bureaucrats and other uncollected officials. So the political empowerment section’s focus on legislative branches of government which focus on number of MPs, cabinet positions and female heads of state are meaningless when other political institutions like the military aren’t taken into account.Political representation weightages were off too. Too much emphasis on the head of state and female MPs. There is a track record of token female heads of state that hold no real power in our country and female MPs are already artificially high due to reserved seats and quotas. They don’t indicate whether the gender gap is closed, only that local political elements have become smart enough to project a press friendly, female face to the public and international audience while hold power themselves by keeping key cabinet and party positions for their own use. There’s also the problem that if your female MPs and PMs are being elected because of family links, patronage and tribalism rather than the public viewing them as valued political representatives based on merit, then it’s not really a sign of reducing gender equality is it?Come to think of it, Pakistan, with it’s female prime ministers, fighter pilots, army generals and female voters, scoring lower than Saudi Arabia now begins to sound weird when you think about it. Saudi women are actually known to sometimes marry Pakistani men because Pakistan has more social and cultural freedoms for them.Saudi women prefer to marry foreignersA better indicator: How many women hold positions of power within the top 3 levels of each institution of powerIt would be far superior, in my opinion, to measure whether there is a critical mass of female leadership across key power institutions in the country:Legislative elected officialsThe executive, civil service bearucratsKey organizations like election commissions, disaster management bodies etcThe MilitaryPolice and law enforcementIntelligence agenciesJudiciaryReligious bodiesGrassroots level political and local government bodiesCivil society bodies and citizen bodiesLargest private sector businesses and corporationsEducational bodiesLets we assume a “top down” model that each organization has 1 top head, a panel of executives directly reporting to him or her and a small staff of officers reporting to each executive.Critical mass would mean that all 3 top levels of leadership have a significant enough presence from women that their presence and policies makes an impact on gender disparity throughout the organization.And these policies translate into out-of-organization, real world shifts in gender disparity.Say you have the top CEO, 5 executives and 3 officers for each executive (total of 15). A critical mass would be 2–3 of the executives and half of the staffers being women with the CEO position having a healthy mix of male and female CEOs over time.When you apply the same logic to intensely patriarchal orgs like the military, intelligence and law enforcement, then the results are truly far ranging. All of the 12 organization types that i listed are the kind of political power institutions that can truly decide what kind of society we live in and which direction our country is headed towards.Our primary purpose is to ensure that female leadership has both WIDTH and DEPTH. Width in that it is across multiple institutions of power in civil, military and private sector spheres. Depth in that it is across multiple levels of power (in our example we used the top 3 levels of each organization). This will ensure that a core of female leadership is developed and maintained.I know i spoke disparagingly against quotas earlier when talking about parliament, but that was in that context (civil parliament and female MPs being a problematic benchmark in a country with dynastic politics and a strong military say in government affairs). But here, i’ll state that quotas are absolutely necessary and need to embedded into our constitution and party manifestos as well as organizational policies.There would need to be reserved seats in the top leadership positions in all of these powerful institutions that allow for a critical mass of female leadership to form and maintain itself. And those leadership roles should encompass critical roles within each power institution (not just be confined to auxiliary roles only).Of course, there will be those who say we are weakening national institutions by pushing some PC, feminist, libtard agenda. And that we will push unqualified candidates on critical power institutions just for some feminist crusade.First off, government institutions suffer a lot from sexist, patriarchal bull****. I say this having worked in a government agency myself. Incompetent men benefit immensely from the “all boys club” we have going on in core power institutions. They get to have their fragile egos stroked by making women work under them and at the same time prevent any competition from female colleagues. With the end results that several competent and dynamic female officers leave to go abroad or work in the private sector where they will be valued.Secondly, if you’re at that stage where you cant find even 1 good female candidate for your critical power institutions, then you have failed immensely as a nation to provide education, mentoring and experience opportunities for nearly half of your population. This is an urgent shortcoming to be corrected rather than accepted.If you think women will weaken the armed forces, the intelligence agencies or the judiciary and so on, i have but to recount the long litany of military defeats at the hands of macho, alpha male generals we have running around in our office corp to make my point.At the end of the day, i’m not asking for special favors for a gender. I’m asking for a widening of our talent pool. A feminist approach to our political institutions isn’t about forcing women down our throat. It’s about increasing our selection pool of candidates by doubling it to include women more. Which automatically means we get the chance to find and staff even more and better candidates in our power institutions. And once this happens across the board on our top level political institutions as a whole, in a holistic manner, it will begin to shift our society slowly but surely towards a more feminist mindset as well.Also, don’t just stop at the quotas. They need to be accompanied by educational campaigns throughout society which emphasize the importance of having more women involved in not just society but in leadership positions. So that the mindset stays. Parties change, power shifts and states get upended.It’s the mindset that endures in the end. If a feminist idea of society is normalized and a young man does not balk at the idea of being led by a female general in combat, then your society has achieved an enduring win against gender inequality.I should also point out that the target audience of such reeducation must not only be the men of a society, but the women themselves as well. Too often do women become their own instruments of oppression because of the patriarchal mentality thats engrained into them from a young age. They are raised to believe they must be passive, focus on their looks and be submissive to men in order to be likeable. They are encouraged to shun other women who do not adhere to traditional, patriarchal definitions of femininity.It is imperative that our society break this mentality by telling our young women that they must be willing and ready to lead. That they are free to define what it means to be a woman themselves but at the same time they must balance that with the requirements of leadership. That it is their right to lead both men and women from top offices in the country. If they want to bring their own style of leadership, they are free to do so as long as it delivers results. They are free to be tough, aggressive, loud and combatative if they feel the situation requires it.Thus, our education must stress to both genders that women are free to define what it means to be feminine but also, women leadership is a right and a requirement in all top offices within our country. Lack of female leadership will hold the country back, waste half of our human talent and cut us off from the potential that female leaders can bring to the work place.A few interesting examplesIf you look at the Data across the spectrum you get some pretty interesting results.Law enforcement compositionSource: Share of female police officers for selected countries 2012 | Statistic2. Law enforcement top slotsSource:http://ispc.gencat.cat/web/.content/home/ms_-_institut_de_seguretat_publica_de_catalunya/04_recerca_i_cooperacio_internacional/Estudis-ispc/women_in_police_services/women_in_police_services_eu_2012.pdfMilitary serviceWomen in the military by country - Wikipedia% of female managersThe Countries With the Most Women Managers Worldwide% of female managersThe Countries With the Most Women Managers WorldwideWomen in Senior management:Countries With the Highest Number of Female ExecutivesCabinet positions typically held by womenhttps://www.ipu.org/resources/publications/infographics/2017-03/women-in-politics-2017?utm_source=Inter-Parliamentary+Union+%28IPU%29&utm_campaign=550dedbec7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_02_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d1ccee59b3-550dedbec7-258891957Where are the women leaders?Political participation by women (Blueish hazes being most and Red/Green/Yellowish being least)https://www.ipu.org/resources/publications/infographics/2017-03/women-in-politics-2017?utm_source=Inter-Parliamentary+Union+%28IPU%29&utm_campaign=550dedbec7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_02_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d1ccee59b3-550dedbec7-258891957Analysis of the examplesWe see a few key points that elaborate what we discussed here:It’s easier to get women involved in government organizations through quotas and laws than compared to the private sector. Sweden has high levels of representation for women in government posts, but comparatively low in private sector.Countries like Jamaica score very high in private sector management by women due to women having much better criminal records, educational and academic achievements and structured lifestyles vis a vis their male peers. Articles describe how education and law abiding lifestyles are derided as feminine in certain musical subcultures in the country with the result that women make better hires than men.( Jamaica has more female bosses than anywhere in the world). It’s possible this is also the reason why Russia has high levels of female representation in upper private sector levels as women tend to have better criminal records, structured lifestyles, hard work and educational achievements. If men in a society deem law abiding, education focused lifestyles as too “feminine” and not macho enough for them, women overtake them in the private sector.Backward countries like Pakistan ironically have very progressive policies for women in the military due to the constant warlike state they take and their military competition with India which forces them to expand their talent pools and tap into the country’s women. We have seen similar things in the World Wars where military pressures on male demographics forced governments to tap into female labor and lead to female empowerment. The military could lead the way in female empowerment in the country and indeed, Pakistan is one of the few Muslim countries to boast female fighter pilots, combat troops, commandos and generals. Algeria too is promoting women to the rank of general under pressure from regional instability, insurgency and regime change and this is an example of external pressure and threat forcing women into power.You can have a female head of state and still not be a good country for women due to the “token female head” or hereditary politics phenomena. Power needs to be held across the board in multiple institutions and multiple depths as talked about before.Female entrepreneurship and business startups are one of the catalysts to having more women in power in the private sector which is more resistant than the government in hiring women to top levels. The Bangladeshi Garmeen bank tapped into this by giving micro loans to women of a household rather than men as they were more financially responsible and invested in long term gains compared to men. Latin American and African countries with strong female managerial representation have similarly strong entrepreneurial environments. The US also scores high due to its free market capitalist policies. Female entrepreneurship is definitely one way the government can achieve private sector representation for women, besides having laws that require female representation.As i suspected, women are shunted into low risk cabinet positions in cabinets. We see similar themes in other organizations too (medical in the military, HR and client relationships in corporate, female police to handle female rioters and criminals in conservative nations etc). Every organization tends to coral women into supportive roles while keeping core decision making positions for men themselves. Hence the earlier call in my answer for across the board representation of women in all power institutions on multiple levels.A critical part of the battle is in the education sector. A lot of the tech and engineering circles tend to create environments not exactly welcoming to women. Similarly, men can refuse to take up roles that they associate as traditionally being filled by women (nursing, kindergarten etc). Addressing the skew is a big problem and quite controversial. In Pakistani society, a woman’s chance of getting married to a good household are boosted if she is a doctor with the result that many parents send their daughters to med school who then prefer to become housewife and not practice their medicine. Which creates the problem that many male candidates who DO want to get into med school and practice cannot. Female candidates also do not want to go practice in rural areas where medical care is most urgently required. Female med candidates also have higher test scores so get admission more frequently. The government is attempting to address this by putting an upper cap on female candidates to med school and trying to redirect some of them to engineering jobs with low field work (Muslim conservative society problems) like software engineering, mathematical research and electronics. Similarly, male medical candidates might soon have quotas for them in med school as the government needs male doctors willing to work in rural and remote areas.Final thoughtsI’m glad i managed to learn at least one thing during my younger days as a Marxist: There’s a difference between reducing the Gender Gap and actually giving power to women.Everyone's OK with Gender gap stuff like the pay gap and female enrollment and female literacy. These are nice improvements which make a country better and stronger while not challenging the traditional power structure of society.My own understanding, based on Marxism, is that it is the sexual control of women and the control of women’s labour that is the seat of patriarchy. Women produce children but they also produce labour: outside the home and within where she fulfils multiple roles of wife and mother, teacher, cook, cleaner, washerwoman.Nighat Said Khan, Interview with Dawn Herald, March 8 2017The sole voice: Women's rights activist, Nighat Said KhanEveryone is OK with using women as labor so their empowerment within strictly labor oriented terms is encouraged to make the workforce more productive. So their education, health and employment falls within the gambit of Marxist social engineering.But here’s the question: If the workers conducted a revolution and seized the institutions of power and production in order to break down the traditional structure of society which oppressed them…shouldn’t that same logic apply to women as well if they fail to get leadership positions within a Marxist state?If the workers rebelled and seized power to have control over their means of power and production and they did this by seizing institutions of power, then if women are denied similar leadership positions within a Marxist state, then they have been betrayed and must wage a similar struggle of their own in order to ensure their empowerment and break from structures of oppression.The other day, one of our drivers told me during a conversation that he always avoided staring at women in a certain sector of the capital with lots of government offices. I asked him why that was and he replied: “You never know which of those women might turn out to be an officer rather than a common person. If you stare at the wrong one or smile at her, she’ll drag your ass”The shifting of power between genders is perhaps the hardest but most critical indicator of whether or not the gender gap is being reduced or not. And the only one that promises some relief to the women in our country.As for my fellow country women, i would urge you to be involved in this effort and give us your own insight here as well. It’s your voice that’s more important than mine on this issue. We need not accept the scraps our traditional power structure deem fit to throw at us from time to time. Only through a radical and sustained effort on our part will result in any change to our current abysmal ranking.

Almost certainly, collusion between the Trump campaign (including Trump himself) and the Russian Government in an attempt to prevent Hillary Clinton from winning the election. While I don’t think they succeeded since Hillary lost for other reasons, the Muller investigation has all but confirmed that some form of collusion took place.The evidence is as follows: (Warning, massive walls of text ahead).As you probably know unless you have been living in the central Amazon for the last year and a half, the Democratic National Convention was hacked into by an internet persona with ties to Russian intelligence. The target of this attack was a series of Emails from DNC members which proved that they were trying to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders (which wasn’t actually necessary because Sanders would have lost even without the super delegates). These emails were later released by Wikileaks, an organization whose leader, Julian Assange, has ties to Russia.Hillary Clinton and Vladimir Putin hate each other. Putin had accused Clinton of interfering in the internal affairs of his government during her tenure as secretary of state from 2009–2013, especially during the 2012 Russian general elections, where Clinton accused Putin of rigging the votes, prompting anti-government protests in Moscow. Clinton has also been an outspoken critic of Putin’s human rights record as well as that of his ally, Bashar al Assad. Fearing what Hillary’s hawkish foreign policy would mean for Russia, Putin saw any opportunity to Hillary’s rise as a better option, even someone as unpredictable as Trump.Russia has attempted to interfere in the elections of other countries before (as has the United States). Most recently, Russian hackers infiltrated the campaign of now-French president Emmanuel Macron, who was running against Kremlin-favored populist candidate Marine la Pen. In 2014, Russia hacked into databases containing information sensitive to candidates in the Ukrainian presidential election who opposed Russian interests. Attempts to alter vote tallies and schemes to inflict malware throughout the country were also uncovered by Ukrainian authorities. Russian propaganda outlets also declared far-right candidate Dmytro Yarosh had won the election and that the vote had been rigged by Ukrainian “Nazis.”Russian hackers attempted to interfere with state-level voting systems, apparently without much success. In September 2016, then-FBI director James Comey announced that the bureau had detected suspicious activity in U.S voter databases. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper stated under oath that such meddling could only be ordered by the highest echelons of the Russian government, implicating Vladimir Putin as the mastermind. Less than a month after Comey’s announcement the National Association of Secretaries of State reported that twenty states witnessed some level of Russian temperament in their voting systems during the primaries. Illinois reported that information on over 200,000 voters were compromised by the hackers. Why else would the Russians put so much time and effort into interfering with an election if not to stop Clinton from winning?A number of intelligence agencies from varying European countries, most notably the United Kingdom, shared intelligence with their American counterparts on suspicious activities involving illicit interactions between individuals with connections to the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence agents. The CIA later revealed that sources inside the Russian government itself confirmed that the Russians were deliberately trying to help Trump and stop Hillary from winning.On December 9, 2016, the CIA told members of congress that the entire U.S intelligence community (all seventeen agencies) had concluded with confidence that the government of Russia intervened in the election to attempt to assist in Trump’s victory. They also stated that they did not believe Russian meddling changed the outcome of the election. However, the fact that they tried is still disturbing. Trump and his thugs have vehemently denied the report as fake news, and the president-elect himself has attacked the intelligence community, comparing it to Nazi Germany.During the election, veteran Republican operative Peter Smith told the WSJ that he was actively working to locate and release Emails that had been on Hillary Clinton’s private server, and that he had asked some Russian hacking groups to help him. Smith claimed to be working for Michael Flynn, another shady character who himself was engaged in suspicious meetings with Russian officials, and that he was in contact with Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.Top national security advisor for the Trump administration Michael Flynn was forced to resign on February 13, 2017, after news got out that he had met with Russian officials and had lied to vice president Mike Pence about it. Specifically, he had been caught discussing the repealing of sanctions against the Russian federation with the Russian ambassador at the time Sergey Kislyak on December 29, 2016. Worse still, since the meeting took place 22 days before Trump was sworn in as president, Flynn did not represent any branch of the United States government at the time and was therefore in violation of the Logan act, which prevents civilians and unauthorized personal from negotiating with representatives of foreign states. A few days ago it got out that Flynn lied to the FBI about the meetings days before his firing, that Trump knew he had lied to the FBI and that he didn’t fire him until the public got word of his misdeeds through his false statements to Pence.On May 9, 2017, Trump fired director Comey. The alleged reason for this was that Trump was upset about Comey being unfair to Hillary Clinton during the Email investigation, despite Trump’s near constant attacks on Hillary and his past praise of the director. He later revealed the real reason he fired Comey in a T.V interview, which was, of course, the Russia investigation. During the same interview Trump tried, and failed, to divert suspicion by once again lambasting the investigation as a witch hunt, which hardly cleared up anyone’s suspicions. Comey later confirmed Trump’s intentions to fire him in a testimony before congress on June 8, 2017. “I take the president at his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. Something about the way I was conducting it, the president felt, created pressure on him he wanted to relieve” he said. In other words, Trump was so paranoid about the investigation that he fired the director of the FBI to stop the conclusion from being revealed. Not suspicious at all. Comey also accused Trump of lying about him and of slandering the intelligence community.Numerous reports exist that Trump and his cronies have asked top-brass intelligence officials to stop the investigations into the Russian meddling, raising additional suspicions. Furthermore, Trump also asked high ranking intelligence leaders if they could stop the investigation into Michael Flynn. James Comey has testified multiple times that Trump repeatedly told him to “let it go,” referring to the investigation, something that Comey interpreted as a command. His refusal was one of the reasons Trump had him fired. If true, this would indicate both obstruction of justice and further imply that Trump does not want investigators to find something.New details were revealed several months ago about a meeting between Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr, his son in law Jarrad Kushner, former campaign manager Paul Manifort and a number of other shady characters including Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and former Soviet counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin in the president’s house at Trump tower. That would be sketchy enough if not for a series of tweets that lead up to the meeting between Don Jr. and Rob Gladstone, a British publicist who arranged the meeting and served as a middle man between the two parties. He literally stated via tweet that the Russians had compromising information on Hillary Clinton that the Trump campaign would find useful. Instead of, you know, reporting this to the CIA, Don Jr, the president’s son, enthusiastically responded and promised that a meeting focusing on that topic would be set up in the future.Attorney general Jeff Sessions spoke twice with the Russian ambassador (who I might add is considered by U.S intelligence to be a recruiter of spies for the Kremlin). Sessions went on to lie about it during his conformation hearing in front of the senate, stating that he "did not have communications with the Russians." He later recused himself from investigations related to the Russia scandal after word got out that he had lied to the senate. Trump lashed out at him for this move, which only increased suspicion on the part of the Trump white house. Sessions was an early supporter of Trump’s campaign and had met with Trump before the election.Paul Manifort and his subordinate Rick Gates were arrested on the orders of special council Robert Muller for a staggering amount of crimes ranging from international money laundering, failing to disclose information about foreign bank accounts, lobbying for a foreign government (in this case the Russian puppet government of Ukraine, overthrown in 2014) and making false and misleading statements to officials. Though none of these charges have any connection to the campaign itself (so far), it raises questions on why Trump would hire someone to manage his campaign with such a lengthy criminal record.George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign, plead guilty the same day of the Manefort indictment for lying to authorities about numerous contacts with shady characters connected to the Kremlin. Most notably, he held a meeting with a British professor in Italy with ties to the Russian government under suspicious circumstances. In March of 2016, even before the DNC hack, Papadopoulos emailed another ranking member of the Trump campaign telling him about his meeting with the Professor and announcing his intentions to set up a direct meeting between campaign representatives and Russian officials. He continued to communicate with Russian associates throughout the remainder of the campaign.I think that’s everything. Let me know if I missed something important.“Fake news” sources…https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdfRussians hacked two U.S. voter databases, officials sayRussia blamed as Macron campaign blasts 'massive hacking attack' ahead of French presidential electionUkraine election narrowly avoided 'wanton destruction' from hackersU.S. official: Hackers targeted voter registration systems of 20 statesBritish spies were first to spot Trump team's links with RussiaPutin denied meddling in the U.S. election. The CIA caught him doing just that.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.ef65ffa5eb29A Timeline of the Trump-Russia ScandalFull text: James Comey testimony transcript on Trump and RussiaWhere things stand with special counsel's Russia probeWhat did Michael Flynn lie about? Everything to know about Mueller’s new chargeWhy did Flynn lie and why did Mueller charge him with lying?GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to FlynnRobert Mueller is looking into Michael Flynn’s potential ties to Russian hackersJeff Sessions Recuses Himself From Russia InquiryTrump Jr. Was Told in Email of Russian Effort to Aid CampaignFormer Soviet counterintelligence officer at meeting With Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyerTrump Jr. was told potential Clinton info came from Russian government: report

The Crusades are among the most dramatic mass movements in world history, and they continue to catch our imaginations for good reasons.Generally, there is agreement there were nine “Eastern” crusades, maybe five “Northern” crusades, and between one and seven “Anti-heretic” crusades. We can generalize a little and say that, while they were all uniquely medieval products of specific circumstances, attitudes, and values of the High and Late Middle Ages, it can also be said that the crusades had some things—such as religion—in common.However, even that is not really a common thread except in the most general way. Where religion was the major motivator for the Eastern campaigns, the same cannot be said for the rest. For the Northern crusades, religion was an addendum, and for the anti-schismatic campaigns, the religious motive was essentially an excuse—a cover—for power politics. Those crusades were the germinating seeds of European nation-state building.For those who have no desire for the details that support these conclusions, I have included a “short answer,” here at the start.The Short Answer:I. What were the reasons behind the Eastern Crusades?The reasons for the Eastern crusades were (1) to aid and defend those who desperately needed and asked for help, (2) to rescue those who wanted to be rescued, and liberate territories that had been taken, by force, from them, and (3) to honor God by serving others through penitential warfare, Christian love, and the imitation of Christ.They were halted due to costs, repeated failure, the personal nature of crusading, and changes that took place in Europe.II. What were the reasons behind the Northern Crusades?The primary ‘reasons’ that drove the northern crusades were: to capture trade routes, grab land for the land hungry, increase the revenues and reputations of pirates and princes, to prevent rampant piracy by the opponents, to obtain natural resources and loot from them, and to subdue the people in a way that would make them peaceful neighbors—permanently—by converting them to Christianity through force.They were halted when they succeeded.III. What were the reasons behind the anti-schismatic crusades?(1) HeresyThe Pope called for action against heretics. This was necessary for crusade, but the religious motive was really a cover for the political motives of the various local authorities.(2) Nation BuildingThese crusades represent the first steps of European nation-state building and the beginnings of the death of feudalism.If you want to know more, read on.I. THE EASTERN CRUSADES“Our current understanding of crusade ideology is centered on the concepts of pilgrimage, penitential warfare, just war, Holy War, the defense of the church, liberation, Christian love, and the imitation of Christ.” [1][1][1][1]These are seen as the primary reasons for the eastern crusades, that are well established historically, but these crusades are also surrounded by popular myth that allege all kinds of contrary things about them.First, Dispel MythsOne otherwise generally reliable Western Civilization textbook claims that “the Crusades fused three characteristic medieval impulses: piety, pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential.”[2][2][2][2] They support this by claiming early crusaders were mostly disenfranchised second sons who wanted to get rich.The crusaders were pious for the most part, and who knows, they probably were pugnacious too, since it took a lot of that to survive the conditions of crusading, but whatever else they were, they weren’t motivated by greed.During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have thoroughly exploded this myth.A charter is a record of sales or loans of lands and/or rights. Charters reveal that crusading knights were generally wealthy men—first born sons—who already had titles, land, and prosperity.[3][3][3][3] To finance the long and arduous expedition to the near east, they sold their possessions, lands, and the rights to their lands. In fact, they sold so much so fast that they caused widespread inflation. Europe is littered with thousands of the charter-records of these transactions.Crusading was incredibly expensive. The wealthy were the only ones who could afford to go, and even wealthy lords were often impoverished by joining a Crusade. Greed may have been a motive for an individual here or there, and there were even a few who became rich by crusading, but their numbers are dwarfed by those who were bankrupted by it.[4][4][4][4] [5][5][5][5]The Lord in the lead paid expenses for his household, including his soldiers, to go crusading.Another popular myth claims the crusaders were “thuggish Westerners who trundled off unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims.[6][6][6][6] One otherwise dependable text even claims: “The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed—literally—task of slaughtering unbelievers.”[7][7][7][7]These are both absolute myth.1.The single greatest cause of the eastern crusades was a plea for help from the Byzantine Empire which genuinely needed that help.In the AD 600s, most of those in the territory surrounding the Mediterranean Sea were Christians.This included the Byzantine Empire which existed along the eastern Mediterranean, inside the boundaries of the old Eastern Roman Empire, where orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion.Outside of those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. For example, most of the Christian population of Persia were Nestorian Christians. The Visigoths of Spain were Arian Christians as were the Vandals in North Africa. Certainly there were many different Christian communities spread throughout what was then Arabia.When Islam began in the early 600s, Mohammad and his followers divided the world into two spheres: the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—any non-Muslim religion or ideology—was seen as having no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state, under Muslim rule, but in ancient Islam, Christian and Jewish states had to be destroyed and their lands conquered and absorbed and the people converted.Mohammad began taking over the Arabian peninsula by destroying the Christian and Jewish communities in, or shortly after, AD 633, after which Jews and Christians alike were subsequently expelled from the peninsula.Those in Persia came under severe pressure.Muhammad died in 632, and in the century or so after, (from 632 to 750), his followers unleashed a series of seemingly unstoppable military campaigns that consumed much of Christendom.The Rise of IslamMotivated by the lure of plundered wealth, the pressures of overpopulation, and the command to make Holy War, the Arabs proceeded to build a world state that rivaled the Roman Empire at its peak.[8][8][8][8]By AD 732, one century after Mohammed’s death, Islam had conquered and taken Egypt, Palestine, Syria, most of Asia Minor, and parts of southern France and had already begun knocking on doors all around Europe. By 740, North Africa had been added along with most of Spain. Italy and her associated islands were under constant threat and would come under Muslim rule in the next century.In the eighth century, Muslim armies through fierce military might, had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks finished conquering Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. By the time of the crusades, two thirds of the former Roman Christian world had been taken over through military conquest.The holdings of Byzantium (and the resources they contained) were reduced to little more than Greece.In desperation, the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.Pope Urban the II subsequently called upon the knights of Christendom to do so at the Council of Claremont in 1095.2. Rescue and LiberateThe Pope’s plea produced in the west the second leading cause of the eastern crusades: a desire to rescue the Christians of the East who were being harassed, taken, killed, forcibly converted and/or mistreated,[9][9][9][9] and to liberate from Moslem rule the territory they had taken.Jerusalem had been conquered in 637. Getting it back was the first step toward that overall goal. These “reasons” were announced and recorded by the various Popes, espoused by his representatives, and committed to by all.The response was universal across all of European Christendom. Thousands of noble warriors, and common ones, from multiple countries, and varied backgrounds took the vow and prepared to go to the aid of those who had asked for help.Multinational support from the English, French and the Holy Roman Empire.There were splinter groups like the Peasant’s Crusade and the Children’s crusade who were ill-prepared and mostly starved or were killed, but the First official crusade with a real army was led by Raymond of Toulouse, Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Flanders, and Bohemond of Otranto.This Crusade of Christian knights, their families, and their fighting men, crossed into Asia Minor in 1097 to rescue the Christians of the East, and to liberate the territories that had been conquered and taken against the will of the people, and their chosen government, beginning with Jerusalem.Throughout the entire period of crusading, this focus on rescue and liberation remained.[10][10][10][10]We even have a modern parallel that can help us understand this perspective.This is strikingly similar to the First Gulf War of our modern day. In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait—just as early Muslims had invaded Byzantium. Kuwait called for help, just as Byzantium did; they reached out to the west, as Byzantium had. The United States was vocal in its public justifications for involvement, just as the Pope was.The most prominent modern justification was the necessity to protect the territorial sovereignty of Kuwait—much like the crusades stated intent was to return captured Byzantine territory to Byzantium after they had finished recapturing it. The possibility of potential future danger to the West was also raised—and in the case of the crusades, was real.The US drummed up support for an international coalition and 34 countries united to rescue Kuwait and liberate the country through force of arms— just as the crusaders came from different nations and intended the same.The First Gulf War was a response to one country’s aggression.The crusades were a response to more than four centuries of aggression.3. ReligionReligion was a major “reason” for the eastern crusades.Crusaders volunteered, though they knew it would be a hard and costly campaign, because the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed as a way to purify one’s soul and follow in the footsteps of Christ. This idea is still found in Christian doctrine.Crusading was also, from the very beginning, seen as an act of Christian charity, of selfless love, of “laying down one’s life for one’s friends.” Crusading was seen as an act of duty and service to God and to others.As manifestations of Christian love, the crusades were as much the products of the renewed spirituality of the central Middle Ages, with its concern for living the vita apostolica (apostolic life—the life of a true disciple) and expressing Christian ideals in active works of charity, as were the new hospitals, the pastoral work of the Augustinians, and the service of the friars.The charity of St. Francis may now appeal to us more than that of the crusaders, but both sprang from the same roots.[11][11][11][11]This did not change as long as these eastern crusades lasted even though the later crusades were not called for by the Pope. For example, the Seventh and Eighth crusades were led by the French king Louis IX.Louis had defeated the English in 1242 but afterward, he had fallen seriously ill, at Pontoise-lés-Noyon, with a form of malaria. He was miraculously cured, and it was then, in December 1244, that he made a vow to take up the cross and go free Jerusalem.Jerusalem had, once again, fallen into Muslim hands on August 23, 1244, and the armies of the sultan of Egypt had also seized Damascus. Louis led the seventh and eighth Crusades to rescue and liberate— just as the first crusaders had.The Eighth Crusade under King Louis IX of France.For them, in their day, the evidence strongly suggests that most crusaders were genuinely devoted Christians motivated by a sincere desire to please God by liberating those who had expressed a desire to be liberated, by expiating personal sin, doing their duty, and imitating the suffering of Christ, and by putting their lives at the service of their Byzantine “neighbors” as understood in the Christian sense.[12][12][12][12][13][13][13][13]Intolerance was not a ReasonIt is difficult for modern minds to reconcile our post-Reformation understanding of what we think good values are supposed to be, and the bloody nature of crusading, but it’s the responsibility of the modern interpreter of history to adjust their thinking to the Middle Ages and not judge the Middle Ages by modern standards.Social tolerance and religious freedom are post-Enlightenment values.It cannot be fairly claimed that intolerance was a reason for the crusades since tolerance and intolerance were not starting points for ideas about relations among the people of this era.Crusaders were products of their times, circumstances, and character—just as we are—and can only be judged by what they knew and not what they didn’t know.Illegitimate Wars of colonialism was not a ReasonThese men were not pacifists. They were supporters of just war, and by definition the Eastern crusades were a just war.The crusaders had no intention of staying in the East and most didn’t. In fact, so many went home after the First crusade, the crusader forts were left critically undermanned, which ultimately led to Jerusalem falling back into Moslem hands.Forced Conversions were not a ReasonThe Crusaders used force and violence to defeat their armed, militant opponent’s armies and retake territory— these were wars, after all—but they did not, at any time, use force as a means of imposing Christian belief. Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that none of the military religious orders confronting the Muslims sought to impose baptism by threat of force.They did hope to establish conditions conducive to the peaceful conversion of Muslims. [14][14][14][14] But Muslims living under Christian lords were not coerced into baptism, either at the time of conquest or later, and though they lost public use of their mosques, they were permitted to freely retain their religion.[15][15][15][15]Why were the Eastern Crusades halted?CostsOne of the chief reasons for the foundering of the Fourth Crusade, and its diversion to Constantinople, was the fact that it ran out of money before it had gotten properly started, and was so indebted to the Venetians that it found itself unable to keep control of its own destiny.Louis IX’s Seventh Crusade in the mid-thirteenth century cost more than six times the annual revenue of the crown.Eventually the sums necessary to mount a crusade simply made it impossible to continue.[16][16][16][16]They failedWhen we think about the Middle Ages, it is easy to view Europe in light of what it became rather than what it was in the middle ages, but the colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom. The Crusades are interesting because they were an attempt to counter that, but in five centuries of crusading, it was only the First Crusade that significantly rolled back the military progress of Islam.The Muslim world was eventually victorious because of the insightful and charismatic leadership of Nur al-Din, and Saladin, and by the Baybars’ unflinching ruthlessness.Participation was VoluntaryCrusaders were not drafted. Crusades were constructed as voluntary and personal.[17][17][17][17] It is this very nature of Christian crusading that was the cause of its ultimate defeat.Crusaders mostly saw themselves as fulfilling a duty of service to God, offering succor to fellow Christians, and even imitating the sufferings of Christ, and this did not readily lend itself to unity of purpose where military goals were concerned.[18][18][18][18] They were frequently disorganized, often at odds about who should be in charge, and occasionally refused to cooperate with each other, dividing their armies, and going their separate ways. This made them much easier to defeat.Europe changedAs the centuries passed, the European crusaders became part of what eventually brought Byzantium to an end. There is no doubt the western crusaders began with every intent of helping the Byzantines, but in the end, there was no longer a Byzantium to aid.By that time, Europe was experiencing both Renaissance and Reformation. Colonialism had begun. Economic prosperity was increasing and there was fierce competition between the European nations states for money, land and power.Leaders, both Christian and Muslim, secular and spiritual, came to realize the ideals of Holy War could be harnessed for other more gainful purposes. Royal programs of militarization, the imposition of autocratic government, the attempt to control and direct violence—ostensibly for the common good—served the interests of the ruling elite more than crusading ever had.THE NORTHERN CRUSADESThe Northern (or Baltic Crusades), went on intermittently from 1147 to 1316. They were attempts by the Teutonic Order, along with the nobility of northeastern Germany, to bring the pagan Baltic tribes under their control, convert them to Catholicism, and most importantly, grab their land and gain wealth. [19][19][19][19]The Northern Crusades are different from the Eastern Crusades in several important aspects:[20][20][20][20]1) The Military Religious OrdersThe Northern Crusades were primarily led by the military religious orders from beginning to end. The military orders— (the Order of the Temple, also known as the Knights Templar, the Order of St. John, also called the Hospitallers, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, and the Teutonic Knights)—did not play a large role in the First Crusade, though they did later become a very powerful force in crusader politics. [21][21][21][21]2) They Did Not FailUnlike the Eastern Crusades, the Northern Crusades were ultimately successful in achieving their goals.3) Not DefenseAlso unlike the Eastern Crusades and the Reconquista, the Northern Crusade cannot be claimed to be defensive except in a very tenuous manner.The German Empire had a long tradition of sending Christian missionaries to the area northeast of Germany known as the Wendish ‘frontier,’ a hotspot of many wars, often resulting in the untimely death of said missionaries. Efforts at evangelism were also efforts at peace, since these sides fought and raided each other, but the resulting deaths and other atrocities against Christians, (reported by such figures as the archbishop of Magdeburg in 1108 AD), stirred the desire for a military response instead.4) ConquestThere was no question of reclaiming previously Christian lands - this was simple conquest.In the twelfth century, there were free pagan people living around the Baltic Sea in northern Europe called the Wends. They raided the areas around them—Denmark and Prussia and Germany and Poland— and those areas raided them. There was nothing unusual in this. It does not indicate these people were amoral or unique. Raiding and taking land and people made life uncomfortable and dangerous, but it had been the norm for centuries.The various Germanic nobles wanted it stopped. Missionary work hadn’t worked. The nobles saw this as an opportunity for territorial expansion and the gaining of material wealth in the form of land, furs, amber, and slaves—and the imposition of a peace they couldn’t refuse.Christianization of the Baltic 1199-13295. Forced ConversionsThat meant the Northern Crusades had, as their end, not only the conquest of land, but the mass conversion of the population, by force if necessary. This represents a significant ideological and moral shift within Christianity.There had been no concept of Holy War within Christianity before the crusades. Holy War wasn’t developed as an idea until sometime in the 1200s. And there had been no forced conversion approved by the church before this time either. [22][22][22][22]Augustine had allowed force to be used in the fourth century to discipline Christians who had gone astray and become a criminal, physical threat to others, but there was no allowance for force to be used on those outside the church to impose Christian belief.Indeed, there still exist multiple writings, by multiple Popes, church leaders, and church doctrine, that had, for centuries, actively opposed such a thing. Credere voluntatis est: to believe depends upon free will, wrote St. Thomas Aquinas (II-II:10:8). [23][23][23][23][24][24][24][24]But church records of the Middle Ages show Christianity massively adjusting its rhetoric, its law, its theology, rituals, and even its finances, to accommodate this new militant aspect. [25][25][25][25]Some scholars say hundreds of years of conflict with militant Islam reshaped Christianity. Some say European culture itself was becoming militant and intolerant.Whatever the causes, in the Middle Ages, beginning with the Wendish Crusade, the Church began to endorse forced conversion, something it had not done before, and had previously spoken against.6) The Non-crusade CrusadeThe Northern Crusade was not designated as a Crusade properly speaking.In 1147, Pope Eugenius III issued the papal bull Divina dispensatione, which, while not declaring the Northern Crusades to be legitimate crusades in the strict sense, nevertheless made the same indulgences available to the Northern crusaders as had been made available to the others.The stage for the Northern Crusades was set in 1144 when a new Islamic leader named Imad al Din Zangi launched successful attacks against the European footholds in Palestine. Edessa fell in 1146, and panic at the Muslim threat spread across Europe. A cry went up for a Second Crusade to return to the East before Jerusalem was retaken.Unlike the First Crusade, which was called for and ordained by the pope, this new call for crusade came from private individuals.Pope Eugenius III supported the idea, however, and enlisted Bernard of Clairvaux as the church’s chief crusade promoter. Bernard was a well known reformer, preacher, writer and mystic. He had great political influence and traveled across Europe calling upon men to enlist in "the cause of Christ."[26][26][26][26]But when the call to crusade went out, many German leaders declined. While soldiers of various western European realms were preparing to return to the Middle East to defend the crusader states against the Turks, central and northern European soldiers obtained permission from Pope Eugenius III to fulfill their vow, and ‘take part’, by going East instead.The Wendish Campaign [27][27][27][27][28][28][28][28]The first year of the crusade (1147 AD) against the Wends was more show than conquest.Saint Bernard had urged the soldiers to convert the heathens, but as the bishop of Stettin said when he watched the crusading army depart, “If they had truly come to strengthen the Christian faith … they should do so by preaching, not by arms.” Besides, the motivation of the combatants—primarily knights and princes—was more related to acquisition of land and power than holiness. Forced conversion mostly failed in this first campaign.The cohesion of the Saxons, Danes, and Poles crumbled in less time than it had taken the religious leaders to convince them to unite in the first place.The Danes believed the Saxons had accepted a bribe to stand by idly while the Wends mauled the Danish forces. The Saxons thought the Danes weak and unfit for alliance.The bishops could not stop bickering among themselves over tithes and titles, and the barons despised them for their greed.Most important was the fact that not a foot of Wendish territory was taken.The church suffered most from the Wendish debacle. Many churchmen felt that conversion of the Wendish pagans should not depend upon military might, but on missionary teaching and example as it traditionally had. Bernard of Clairvaux’s reputation as a crusading leader dwindled, and the Wends got a temporary respite in fighting.In 1152, Frederick Barbarossa became the new Holy Roman emperor, and he was more interested in southern Europe and Italy than Wendish pagans to the east.Unfortunately for the Wends, however, his cousin Henry the Lion had his eyes set firmly on the east, and by the time his cousin took the crown, he had already started building a power base to seize more Wendish territory.Henry the Lion’s intrusion into Wendish territory was sporadic but successful. He grew wealthy off the land he had conquered, building cities and trade centers and profiting equally from both the German and the Wendish peoples. He and the majority of his vassals made peace with the Wendish leader, Nyklot, who had fought hard to hold onto his land, but now found trade with Henry and his allies more profitable and less painful.To the north of Henry lay the lands of Adolf II of Holstein who waged almost nonstop war against the Wends, not for religious reasons, but for territorial and mineral rights. He too succeeded.At the same time, the religious orders continued their own campaigns. The most zealous was led by Eskil, a Danish noble who became archbishop of Lund in 1138 and held the position for 40 years. When his army, and that of Danish king Valdemar, moved against the Wends in 1159, Eskil led his men with such unrelenting vigor that he reprimanded his warriors whenever they stopped to rest.He also encouraged the building of monasteries and ordered Danish warriors to stop slaughtering those Wends who promised to be baptized, but Eskil and his soldiers harried the Wends relentlessly until his death in 1177.Painting of the taking of Arkona and the downfall of idols in 1169. King Valdemar and Bishop Absalon.In 1177, Valdemar defeated the Mecklenburg Wendish forces in battle and seized their territory. When Valdemar died in 1182, the Wends again rose in rebellion, but were defeated by Valdemar’s son, Canute. The land was now effectively under Danish rule.[29][29][29][29]From 1147 to 1185, northern Europe had gone through a great metamorphosis.The German Christian church gained power while the nobility was off fighting for Wendish lands.In civil war-torn Denmark, a new unity became possible after the people joined forces against their ancient enemies, the Wends.Many of the Wendish people escaped eastward, but those who remained behind eventually made common cause with the Christians to root out their cousins.The Wendish Crusade was the first of many, including the Crusades against Livonia, Prussia, Estonia, and Finland (1200-1292), the Lithuanian Crusade (1283-1410), and the Novgorod Crusade against the Russians (1400-1562).Forced conversion became widespread during the Livonian Crusade and the Prussian Crusade. In Old Prussia, the tactics employed in the initial conquest and subsequent conversion of the territory resulted in the death of most of the native population whose language, consequently, became extinct.THE ANTI-HERESY CRUSADESThe most famous of these campaigns was the war against the Aligensians, also known as the Cathars, the largest of the heretic groups of the late 1100s and early 1200s. The sect was founded by crusaders from the Second Crusade who were converted by the Bogomils on their way home to France. They settled mostly in the Languedoc region south of France.There are two distinct lines of reasoning explaining why the Albigensian Crusade occurred.[30][30][30][30]It was the Pope.Some scholars, such as Jonathan Sumption and Stephen O’Shea, paint Innocent III as the mastermind of the crusade. According to Sumption, it was Innocent’s idea all along to use the King of France, as his tool, to mount an offensive against the heretics in the Languedoc.This seems unlikely. How could Innocent know ahead of time that Phillip would volunteer? There is no reason to suspect a “secret agreement” between them before the call went out—why would it need be secret if he was going to respond publicly anyway? It makes no sense.It also seems insupportable when examining the details of the campaign: many of the sites attacked contained no heretics yet they were key sites for a conquest of the region; the Pope withdrew his support more than once and the campaign continued anyway; and the heretics continued to exist and practice after the war ended.If the Pope was the primary mover behind the crusade, these are virtually impossible to explain.It was the King.Jean Markale and other scholars have suggested that the true architect of the Albigensian Crusade was King Phillip Augustus of France.[31]This is supported by the fact that all the men who marched from town to town, burning, killing, raping and looting, were from northern France. (In a takeover, local soldiers are not generally good to rely upon.)In further support of this view, it is a fact that King Phillip Augustus of France was a monarch in considerable distress.He had little control of his fracticious nobles in the north, and had absolutely no control over the southern nobles. Phillip needed a way to channel the aggressive nature in the north and establish dominance in the south.Under law in the Middle Ages, the lands of defeated barons could be legally confiscated.The Albigensian heresy provided the King with the perfect opportunity.Markale states that it was Phillip who actually petitioned Innocent for permission to conduct the Crusade.Both these men were probably necessary for this crusade to happen and if either one had opposed it, it’s most likely it never would have occurred, but an examination of events does clarify that Markale is no doubt correct, and the king was the prime mover behind it.The Albigensian crusade was political and only used religion as a cover for a conquest.(1) HeresyIt is beyond difficult for a modern post-Reformation post-Enlightenment mind, accustomed to thinking in terms of multiculturalism, freedom of religion, and social tolerance, to understand the mindset of the Middle Ages where heresy is concerned.Popular understanding leans toward seeing it as an issue created by the church, to increase its power and control, that was imposed from above on the poor innocent victimized people under their evil sway.This is largely Protestant propaganda from the 15th century, which the Enlightenment thinkers gleefully picked up and ran with in the next two centuries.But it’s not history.Civil UnrestIn history, heresy was a problem of civil unrest. This unrest usually took the form of mob violence which began from the bottom—not the top—and moved into top in the form of legal anarchy among the civil leaders and nobles. The nobles owned the lands, and made the laws for their lands, and they started exiling and burning and hanging whoever they pleased by simply shouting ‘heretic’—and then confiscating their property.Mob ViolenceIn the Middle Ages, a heretic was regarded—by the people—in much the same manner as we might regard someone carrying a highly contagious and incurable deadly disease—imagine the response in a crowded airport if suddenly someone was discovered to have the corona virus. We would lock such a person up where they would not come into contact with anyone.The people of the Middle Ages killed heretics. Moreover, they often killed them in public, in horrible ways.In 1076, Pope Gregory VI excommunicated the residents of the entire town of Cambrai because a mob had seized and burned a ‘heretic’ there.A similar occurrence happened in 1114. The Bishop of Soissons (modern day France) imprisoned some heretics, climbed on his donkey, and left to ask the advice of the holy synod on what to do with them.While he was gone, the “town’s folk”, fearing what they termed the “habitual soft-heartedness of ecclesiastics,” stormed the prison, took the accused outside of town, and burned them alive.In 1145 clergy at Leige managed to rescue some victims from the crowd.Two of the most famous heretics killed during this era were Peter of Bruys who was burned at the stake as a victim of popular fury, and Arnold of Brescia who died under the henchman's axe as a heretic but who was actually a victim of his political enemies.The church thought that rooting out the cause—getting rid of heresy and heretics through conversion, persuasion, or force—was the only possible solution to all this turmoil.(2) MurderKnowing the chaos that unchecked heresy could bring to his beloved Church, Innocent III released a hand-picked group of papal legates led by Piere de Castelnau to squelch the Cathars through reason and persuasion.For years, they traveled around the region, preaching the doctrine of Rome, and engaging Cathar perfecti in debates wherever possible. In 1206 the founder of the Dominican friars began to preach to the heretics as well.These efforts produced few results. The Cathar movement soon grew uncontrollable, spreading rapidly, permeating the church and secular society at all levels.In our modern day, our response to that is, so what? But in the Middle Ages, this was like a terrorist cell that just kept growing.In 1208, Pierre de Castelnau, who had traveled to Languedoc once again to attempt to persuade the heretics, was murdered. It was recorded as death by unknown assailants, but it was commonly believed to have been perpetrated by servants of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, a well known supporter of the Cathars.(3) The PopeInnocent III is regarded as one of the greatest pontiffs of the Middle Ages. [32][32][32][32]It is not refuted by any source that the Albigensian/Cathar doctrine was a heresy in the eyes of the Roman Church. The two dogmas were anathema to each other.In the Languedoc region of what is now southern France, they existed side by side. This put Innocent III was in a dire position and he knew it. He was poised to lose the entire region of Languedoc to a heresy he truly hated.He knew that if the Languedoc was lost to Catharism, that it would only be the beginning. It would open the door for other heresies to flourish and spread. He viewed the heresy as if it were an infection, one that needed to be stopped before it spread, causing permanent harm.Piere de Castelnau was dead, and Innocent held Raimon de Toulouse responsible. Innocent now had his excuse to call for the invasion of the Languedoc. Raymond was excommunicated, and Pope Innocent called upon some civil authority to respond and suppress the Albigensians.King Phillip Augustus of France answered the call.The key to understanding this campaign is in why he answered that call.(4) True CrusadeThe Pope determined this campaign against the Albigensian heretics qualified as a true Crusade, which meant that Church monies could be used to pay for ordinary solders, and those who fought were guaranteed a redemption of their sins.The Pope did insist that a minimum 40-day enlistment was required for a full remission of sins.The campaign thus became characterized by lengthy sieges, a chronic lack of money for anyone not directly belonging to the king, and the slipping away of crusaders every 40 days.(5) Nation Building, Politics and Power to the King [33][33][33][33]If you were to examine a map of central Europe in 1200, you would note that none of the nation states as they exist today are on that map.What we now know as Spain, was 9 separate kingdoms in the middle ages. Italy was divided into four. France was 7 separate kingdoms. Germany was 19—depending upon how you count them. Follow the map into Eastern Europe of the High Middle Ages, and you will find many separate states there as well.This is not how things ended up in a few centuries, and that process of change is what led to many wars, including this one.Nation BuildingBorders in the Middle Ages were porous. There was no such thing as a passport-check point. Borders also shifted, as one noble Lord would attempt to take over land and resources and do away with unfriendly neighbors who were attempting to do the same to him. The Turks and the Ottomans were a constant threat. Combine porous borders, with international threats, and local enemies at your back, and it might seem clear that survival required a new and different approach.Unifying the states around you into one single state, and centralizing its power into one central figure, began to seem the best answer—especially if you were the central figure with the power. The heads of state consolidated power into their own hands by taking it from others.Power to the kingRobert Moore, author of ’The Rise of the Persecuting Society,’ argues that from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, all of European society (including the church) became less tolerant and more militant as a result of this centralization process.[34][34][34][34]They hired paid soldiers and create standing armies of their own. This meant they no longer had to depend upon the nobles to provide soldiers, and that in turn took power from the nobility.They changed law. Previously the nobles made and enforced law on their own lands, but the state began creating law and enforcing it from above through their new police forces. “Crimes against the state” were invented and anyone on the fringes of society was in danger of being charged.They took power by taking it from minorities. This is the era when we see persecution of Jews and other minorities, crusades against Muslims, and the increasing acceptance of forcible conversion.[35]PoliticsWhen the Pope put out the call to prosecute the Cathars, King Phillip of France answered, but King Phillip Augustus had a much simpler reason for wanting to invade southern France than the Pope had. All of those lands were supposed to belong to him, yet the Languedoc nobles paid him no mind. [36][36][36][36]Records of the time refer to the invaders as “the French” because the locals did not think of themselves as belonging to France. Instead, they tended to support Phillip’s enemies, Castile and Aragon.Phillip’s power was waning, and his credibility with the northern nobles was stretched thin. He needed a way to consolidate his power base in the north, and punish his rebellious southern Lords, and gain any land and wealth he could.The Cathar heresy gave Phillip the perfect excuse. [37][37][37][37]The Campaign [38][38][38][38]The Albigensian Crusade began in 1209 and lasted until 1229. Phillip (not the Pope) put Simon de Montfort in charge. Phillip paid for provisioning his men.As the Crusader army left Lyons in the summer of 1209, they moved down the Rhône River toward the holdings of Raymond VI of Toulouse—and met their first snag.Raymond was the figurehead of the enemy, the man suspected of murdering the papal legate Piere de Castelnau, so he was he crusade’s first target. However, he had opened up negotiations with the Pope, and, after a suitable penance and giving up a little land, he joined the Crusader army as an ally instead of an enemy!They had already begun and now they had to shift targets! And there were limited targets available. So they went instead to an area controlled by a man named Trencavel who was not a heretic himself but was known to allow them in his district. This was the city of Béziers.Raymond Trencavel heard they were coming and left, abandoning the city to its own devices. The crusaders did not follow him. It wasn’t him they wanted. Instead, they arrived at Béziers and started to pitch their camp outside the city.The Bishop of the town, Renaud de Montpeyroux, tried to avert bloodshed by coming out of the city to negotiate. He returned with the message that the town would be spared provided it would hand over its heretics.The bishop had drawn up a list of 222 individuals likely to be leaders of their communities, but in a meeting with them at the Cathedral, it was determined that to hand over these people was not possible because they had too much support within the town.So the bishop asked the Cathars to leave the town to save themselves. This proposal was also rejected.The bishop then took the few Cathars who would go and they left without interference.The FightOn 22 July, the crusaders were busy setting up camp and getting settled in — still days away from starting the actual siege — when a group of people from the town came out of the gate overlooking the river Orb. They began to harass the mercenaries and pilgrims of the crusader army.A brawl ensued.Soon the attackers from the town found themselves outnumbered and they retreated back into the town in disarray. Except the mercenaries quickly took advantage of the chaos and followed their retreat, storming the walls of the city that were not yet properly manned.The walls were easily taken, and the mercenaries entered the gate, all without orders from their leaders. The crusader knights, soon realizing that the defenses had been broken, joined the mercenaries in battle, easily overwhelming the town garrison.The mercenaries were now rampaging through the streets, killing and plundering, while those citizens who could run, sought refuge in the churches and cathedrals. But there was no safety from the raging mob of mercenaries. The doors of the churches were broken open, and all inside were slaughtered.Some twenty years later, an apocryphal story about this arose where the papal legate, one of the leaders of the crusaders, was said to have responded: “Kill them all, let God sort them out.” But historian Laurence W. Marvin says it is unlikely the legate ever said any thing at all. “The speed and spontaneity of the attack indicates that the legate probably did not know what was going on until it was over." Marvin says there is no evidence this is anything but a story, composed at a later date, told for effect.[39]Marvin adds they did not kill them all at any rate: "clearly most of Bezier’s population and buildings survived" and the city "continued to function as a major population center" after the campaign.But there is no doubt there was a massacre committed by the mercenaries. The town's population at the time is estimated at between 10,000–15,000, and while some escaped, many were killed. The city had probably only had 700 heretics, but the killing was indiscriminate and totaled many more, though no one really knows how many died.After the massacre, the mercenaries set fire to the town.Horror and terror spread through the land.Massacre at BéziersAs a consequence of the massacre, the Pope cancelled the Crusade status of the campaign.Then later, he gave it back again.Then they massacred and burned another town, and he canceled it again.Then he gave it back again— off and on—over the next 15 years.The thing that is so significant about this is that it had no discernible impact on the conduct of the campaign. If the Pope had really been in charge, it would have.The mighty castle of Carcassonne fell within a month of the massacre at Breziers, and Trencavel was put in a prison from which he would not escape alive. Simon de Montfort then took Trencavel’s lands.Trencavel hadn’t been a heretic, but there were heretics in his lands.Many of the targets in this series of campaigns were not Albigensian strongholds at all. They were instead key locations for taking over the region.It was now clear to everyone, this was a campaign of conquest. This was not about conversion.There was only one attempt to convert the Albigensians as they did in the Northern Crusades, and that was at the seige of Montségur which happened in 1243, long after the campaign was over. [40]The whole region turned into a perpetual war zone with a collapse of law and social order. Guerrilla warfare spread. Massacres, burnings and mutilations continued.In 1211, Raymond of Toulouse fled to England.In 1217, he returned to his stronghold at Toulouse, and the following year, De Montfort placed that city under siege. De Montfort was killed there, when he was hit by a boulder fired from a catapult. The crown prince Louis then took De Montfort’s territories.The war rumbled on at the local level until 1226 when the new king of France, Louis IX (r. 1226-1270 AD) took over and turned out to be one of the most committed of all medieval Crusader kings. A series of French victories came in the next two years, and Raymond VII of Toulouse was defeated, agreeing to the king’s (not the Pope’s) terms of surrender, in 1229.The Treaty of ParisThe Treaty of Paris was signed on April 12, 1229 by the son of the Raymond VI, Raymond VII, of Toulouse and Louis IX of France. It marked the end of 20 years of fiighting. Raymond agreed to all conditions. He agreed to join the fighting against other heretics in the future, to destroy the walls of his capital, to marry his daughter to the King’s brother, and he agreed that, after his death, all his land would be annexed to the Crown of France.[41][41][41][41]He also agreed to pay for and found a university at Toulouse to appease the church because the Albigensians were not destroyed. They continued. Their churches and institutions and many followers were still present and active in the region—on a reduced scale—and there was no provision in the treaty for further efforts at stopping them.The University began, and the church went back to its original methods of reason and persuasion, and while this approach was slower, it was also far more successful. By the early 1300s, the Albigensians had ceased to exist as an organized and distinct body of believers.The Albigensian crusade (1209 – 1229) was supposedly conducted by the Roman church against the Albigensian “heretics”— except it was actually conducted by the French king and his representatives who wanted political power and the lands of the southern Languedoc region.[42][42][42][42]Other anti-schismatic/heretic campaigns are the same type.The Drenther Crusade was launched against the inhabitants of Drenthe in 1228 and lasted until 1232. There are only two sources concerning this conflict that still survive, and one indicates this was actually a civil war over the Bishop’s rights caused by his harsh practices. The Bishop Willibrand put it to the Pope that the Drenthers were heretics for defying him, and though the Deeds of the Bishops of Utrecht presents the crusade as authorized by Pope Gregory IX, there is no other evidence of any papal involvement, and it is possible that the bishop acted on his own initiative.[43][43][43][43]The Stedinger were free farmers and subjects of the Prince of Bremen. Grievances with the Bishop over taxes and property rights turned into full-scale revolt. When an attempt by the secular authorities to put down the revolt ended in defeat, the archbishop mobilized his church and the Papacy to have a crusade sanctioned against the rebels for rebelling.[44][44][44][44]The Bosnian Crusade (1235 until 1241) was supposedly against unspecified heretics but was, essentially, a Hungarian war of conquest of Bosnia. Led by the Hungarian prince Coloman, the crusade came to an abrupt end when Hungary itself was invaded by Tatars. [45][45][45][45]Peter III the Great, King of Aragon, conquered Sicily in 1282. The Pope declared the Aragonese Crusade against him and officially deposed him as king, on the grounds that Aragon was a papal fief. Civil war ensued. [46][46][46][46]The Despenser's Crusade took place during the great Papal schism (which lasted from 1378 to 1417) and the Hundred Year’s war between England and France. "For all its canonical propriety, [it] was the Hundred Years' War thinly disguised." [47][47][47][47]The one exception to the political nature of these crusades might actually be the Hussite Wars. Also called the Bohemian Wars or the Hussite Revolution, they were a series of wars that lasted from 1419 to approximately 1434. The King of Bohemia, King Wenceslaus IV, had plans to be crowned the Holy Roman Emperor, so he suppressed the Hussites, followers of Protestant reformer John Hus, who was executed by the Catholic church for heresy in 1415.Wenceslaus died, his brother inherited, he launched a crusade, civil war ensued; five crusades later, the lands of Bohemia had been totally ravaged, the Bishopric was in such bad shape that it still hadn’t fully recovered fifty years later, and the entire country went Protestant. [48][48][48][48]The crusades are religious and economic and political and military. They represent all the great motivations for war, the bad and the good—land and power and wealth, as well as the desire to defend one’s home and others from unwelcome domination. They show us at our best and our most base.They represent a time most of all, a time when our modern world was first forming, and its birth pangs were being felt throughout society at every level. Change is hard. The crusades are part and parcel of those changes.Footnotes[1] Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216[1] Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216[1] Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216[1] Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216[2] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), 311.[2] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), 311.[2] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), 311.[2] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), 311.[3] The Crusades: A Complete History[3] The Crusades: A Complete History[3] The Crusades: A Complete History[3] The Crusades: A Complete History[4] http://Norman Housley, “Costing the Crusade: Budgeting for Crusading Activity in the Fourteenth Century,” in Th e Experience of Crusading, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59.[4] http://Norman Housley, “Costing the Crusade: Budgeting for Crusading Activity in the Fourteenth Century,” in Th e Experience of Crusading, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59.[4] http://Norman Housley, “Costing the Crusade: Budgeting for Crusading Activity in the Fourteenth Century,” in Th e Experience of Crusading, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59.[4] http://Norman Housley, “Costing the Crusade: Budgeting for Crusading Activity in the Fourteenth Century,” in Th e Experience of Crusading, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59.[5] Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign[5] Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign[5] Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign[5] Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign[6] Remembering the Crusades[6] Remembering the Crusades[6] Remembering the Crusades[6] Remembering the Crusades[7] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), page 311.[7] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), page 311.[7] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), page 311.[7] http://Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, Th e West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), page 311.[8] The Western Humanities, Complete[8] The Western Humanities, Complete[8] The Western Humanities, Complete[8] The Western Humanities, Complete[9] The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain: Dario Fernandez-Morera: 9781610170956: Amazon.com: Books[9] The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain: Dario Fernandez-Morera: 9781610170956: Amazon.com: Books[9] The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain: Dario Fernandez-Morera: 9781610170956: Amazon.com: Books[9] The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain: Dario Fernandez-Morera: 9781610170956: Amazon.com: Books[10] The Concise History of the Crusades[10] The Concise History of the Crusades[10] The Concise History of the Crusades[10] The Concise History of the Crusades[11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24419031?seq=1[11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24419031?seq=1[11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24419031?seq=1[11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24419031?seq=1[12] The Pilgrimage Origins of the First Crusade[12] The Pilgrimage Origins of the First Crusade[12] The Pilgrimage Origins of the First Crusade[12] The Pilgrimage Origins of the First Crusade[13] God's Battalions[13] God's Battalions[13] God's Battalions[13] God's Battalions[14] http:// R.B.C. 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