Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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From the Hildebrandine revival sprang also the Crusades, and the combination of the military and religious ideals of the Latin world in the pursuit of a holy war for the recovery of Christ’s Sepulchre. The Turkish advance was checked; the Eastern Empire was saved from imminent destruction; and a series of Latin states in Syria and Greece extended the scope of western influence at the expense of Orthodox and Mohammedan alike. But the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to overthrow the Empire of Constantinople indicates the high-water mark of the Latin Christian power in the East; and the change in the current of western ideas made the Crusades of the thirteenth century but vain attempts to restore a vanished dream. Before the end of our period, the Christian domination in the East had shrunk to the lordship of a few Greek islands. The Palæologi brought back Byzantine rule to the Byzantine capital; and the strongest kings of the West could not save the remnants of the Latin states in Syria. The Mongol invasions threatened Christian and Saracen alike. While the western prospects were so fair, in the East barbarism was on the highway to ascendency. The Feudal Age.