A:All western political leaders and the Pope and the motivations are mainly political and never in reality been religious. Muslims never been enemies of the church or of Christians. B:The impetus for the crusades began in 1095 when the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I, found that his country was being overrun by Muslim Turkish invaders, and he could not hold them back. The Turkish Seljuk established a new regime in central Anatolia (modern Turkey) with a capital at Konya (ancient Iconium), and the Turkish Danishmends established a new regime in northeastern Anatolia, in effect permanantly supplanting the Byzantine rule in those regions. As a result of this loss of territory, Alexius sent a plea for help to the western Europeans.

Pope Urban II responded in the same year by calling upon all Christians to join a war against the Turkish invaders, promising forgiveness of sins to all who participated. They were not much help to Alexius, since he did not recover any land at all. However, this crusade resulted in Jerusalem being captured and four Crusader states being set up in Syria and Palestine.

After the Muslims began to win back some of the territory they had lost, a new crusade was called for 1147, with Bernard of Clairvaux playing an important role in encouraging participation, but this crusade achieved little.

When Saladin virtually ended the Crusader states in 1187, Pope Gregory VIII called a third crusade, which also achieved very little in the Holy Land. Emperor Frederick I, King Philip II of France, and King Richard of England led this crusade.

Other attempts were made after this, but they also came to very little in the Holy Land.