MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · July 22 · 1209
ON THIS DAY · 22 JULY 1209
Béziers
22 Jul 1209 — a crusade proclaimed against Christian heretics in Languedoc sacks the town and kills thousands, believers and Cathars alike. “Kill them all — God will know his own,” a chronicler reports. Crusade turned inward. A site of memory.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
Once “crusade” meant a holy war carrying an indulgence, it could be pointed at any enemy of the Church — and it was. Look west. In Iberia the long Reconquista (arrows: Toledo 1085, then the great victory) is folded into the crusade movement, with papal indulgences for those who fight the Muslims of al-Andalus. At Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 a combined Christian army shatters the Almohads; watch al-Andalus shrink from half the peninsula to the rump of Granada, and the frontier line jump south. The western crusade is winning exactly as the eastern one fails.
From Chapter 9 — The Idea Turned Loose of The Crusades, 1095–1291 (1212).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — The indulgence, generalized. The spiritual reward that Urban attached to Jerusalem was gradually detached from it. Once popes could grant crusade indulgences for any war they…
- The turn — Las Navas de Tolosa, 16 July 1212. The hinge of the peninsula. The Almohad defeat here breaks Muslim power in Iberia for good; within four decades Córdoba and Seville fall and…
- What it changed — Iberia reconquered. Córdoba falls in 1236 and Seville in 1248 (the arrow); only mountain Granada survives, as a tributary, until 1492. The western front of the crusade…
Then ask the room: By 1220, with crusades called against Spanish Muslims, Baltic pagans and French heretics, what did “crusade” actually mean? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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