Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men
The first crusades were of noble cause. Afterward it just became a matter of pride and papal legacy - which is exactly why it failed and split the Christian churches. You can blame the Christians for their pride...but you must blame the Venetians for their greed as well.
Pope Innocent III:
"How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. (...) They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics."
This post was edited on 12/19 12:19 PM by Moops