Crusade, Jihad, Viking; There is Really Very Little Difference.

The crusades were a series of military expeditions promoted by the papacy during the Middle Ages, initially aimed at taking the Holy Land for Christendom. The concept of a crusade was developed in the eleventh century partially as a result of organised Christian forces fighting Muslims in Sicily and Spain. The Holy Land had been in the hands of the Muslims since 638, and it was against them that the crusades were, at least nominally, directed. Expansionism along with desire for adventure, conquest and plunder seem to have been at least as influential in attracting Christians to the cause as any desire to restore Christ's supposed patrimony.

The main crusades spanned more than two centuries (1096-1300 CE). These extended military raids stemmed from changes that had taken place outside Europe before the time of the Crusades, most notably the growth and expansion of Islam. CHRISTIAN HOLY WARS SUCH AS THESE BEAR A STRIKING RESEMBLANCE TO THE MOSLEM PRACTICE OF THE JIHAD, which by then had become a very successful Islamic institution. By translating the notion of a "holy warrior" into Christian terms, medieval popes created the crusader, a "knight of Christ." and new religious orders composed of fighting monks most notably the Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar.

Popes who promoted the Crusades used their authority to muster an army, appoint its military leaders, and send it on its mission. (Part of the reason for the failure of the crusades was bishops acting as field commanders and choosing the wrong military targets, the wrong battles, and the wrong military manoeuvres).

Definition of crusade in English:

1.)Each of a series of medieval military expeditions made by Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries.

‘the fanaticism engendered by the Crusades’

‘in 1204 the armies of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople’

More example sentences

1.1 A war instigated for alleged religious ends.

‘the Albigensian crusades’.

2.)A vigorous campaign for political, social, or religious change.

‘a crusade against crime’.

VERB[NO OBJECT]

often as adjective crusading

1.)Lead or take part in a vigorous campaign for social, political, or religious change.

‘a crusading stance on poverty’

Origin

Late 16th century (originally as croisade): from French croisade, an alteration (influenced by Spanish cruzado) of earlier croisée, literally ‘the state of being marked with the cross’, based on Latin crux, cruc- ‘cross’; in the 17th century the form crusado, from Spanish cruzado, was introduced. The blending of these two forms led to the current spelling, first recorded in the early 18th century.

What does the word Viking mean?

Vikings abused and beheaded their slaves.

What does the word Viking mean? The word is clearly ancient, appearing in both noun and verb forms on rune stones (right) contemporaneous with the Viking age. Yet, its meaning has changed through the centuries. Even today, the word means different things to different people.

The runic inscriptions suggest that a viking was a man who left his homeland for adventure and profit abroad, with the implication that he planned to return home with his newly won fortune and fame. The word existed in both a noun form (víkingr, the person traveling for adventure) and a verb form (víking, to travel or participate in one of these adventures).

Even the origin of the word is debated. In the old Norse language, víkingr means a man from vík, where vík may have the sense of a bay, or the specific bay called Víkin in the south of Norway. Perhaps the name was applied because the first Viking raiders were from Víkin, or perhaps because the raiders waited in sheltered bays for their victims.

By the time the Sagas of Icelanders came to be written, after the end of the Viking age, the word víkingr still had the sense of a raider, or an adventurer, who traveled overseas looking for fame and fortune. Many saga-age Icelanders and saga heroes are said to have gone on Viking adventures, notably Egill Skalla-Grímsson and his brother Þórólfr.           

The inscription reads: Tóki the Viking raised the stone in memory of Gunnarr, Grímr's son. May God help his soul.

Some Vikings in the sagas are described as reprehensible men: evil-doers and trouble-makers of the worst kind. Many "bad guys" in the stories are introduced "Hann var víkingr mikill" (he was a powerful Viking), including Þórólfr bægifótr, who was not only a great troublemaker while he lived, but also after his death. For years, his ghost tormented and killed the people of the districtIn some early Christian works, contemporaneous with the sagas, the word víkingr is used to mean murderer or plunderer. The Old Icelandic Homily Book, which dates from the early part of the 13th century, paraphrases one of the parables told by Jesus, using the word víkingr:

En þá er konunginum var sagt, hvað þeir höfðu gjört, þá sendi hann her sinn og lét drepa víkinga þá og brenndi upp borgir þeirra.

And when the king was told what they had done, he sent his army and ordered them to kill the vikings and burn their city.

Later, the word lost the sense of adventurer and came to mean only the worst kind of evil-doers. Indeed, the word was scarcely used at all in the later medieval and Renaissance periods.

            The word came back in to wide circulation during the Romantic era in the 19th century, when the study of Viking-age history became fashionable. Artists painted romantic pictures of Viking-age tales. Many ordinary people fancied themselves as latter-day Vikings, decorating their homes in the "Viking" style and dressing in "Viking" clothing.

More serious scholarship in the 20th century suggested that these northern adventurers were not the depraved killers, looters, and rapists depicted in popular stories and tales. And so, for many people, and especially for many English-speaking people, the word Viking was fully rehabilitated. Yet, for some people of the world today, the word Viking retains all of the ugly connotations of casual murder and wanton destruction and horrific brutality.

In these pages, I don't mean to downplay the fact that some Norse people committed these atrocities in the Viking age. But it's worth noting that many other Europeans were also raiding at this time in history, and, like the Vikings, were taking advantage of the changes occurring in the European political and mercantile scenes at this time.

Viking-age documents from other cultures suggest that some Europeans would rather be raided by Vikings than by some of the other raiders active during this period. The Vikings tended to be less interested in sacking towns or in destroying buildings or in mass killings. They were more interested in grabbing the valuables and moving on, and so, for example, they didn't destroy the vineyards at Aquitaine, the way that Frankish raiders did.