There were so many events in this century that we need to divide it, practically, into three parts. So, we are going to do something different to narrate the events that occurred. We will first make a general overview of everything that happened, and then detail each one of them. This was a very rich century, with characters who changed the history of Christianity, but also of much tragedy and horror...

It was in this century that the greatest number of crusades in history took place. It was a matter of honor that the tomb of Jesus be recovered, as well as Jerusalem and the entire kingdom of Israel, which were in the hands of the Muslims. For this reason the crusades were organized – expeditionary military movements, which departed from Europe, precisely from Rome, toward the Holy Land. According to most historians there were a total of nine crusades, one of them consisting only of children.

Another type of movement that we can call a crusade, but which was not to the Middle East, says much about what would later become the Inquisition. It was a type of crusade, but with aspects of persecuting those who thought differently, the heretics, those who disagreed with the Church.

We had the brutal Albigensian crusade, which persecuted the Cathars, in the city of Albi, in the south of France. It was initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate the Cathar heresy. This crusade was marked by extreme violence, with massacres of entire populations and the burning of Cathars at the stake. In the eyes of the Church, the Cathars were heretics.

Another persecution by the Church that occurred was against the Waldensians. This persecution began in the previous century, but reached its peak in this century. This movement was started by a rich merchant from the city of Lyon, in Paris, Pierre de Vou, or Peter Waldo.

We had the emergence of the mendicant orders, which were religious men who followed Jesus and took vows of poverty. Thus arose the Franciscans, led by Francis of Assisi, who wanted to live the Gospel. The Dominicans, led particularly by Dominic of Gusmão, wanted to preach the Gospel, and were known as the preachers of Christ.

From the Dominicans emerged a great character of history, an Italian called Thomas Aquinas. He is considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Catholic Church. He practically turned the history of the Church, becoming a doctor of the Church. His thought was to unite scientific and religious knowledge, in a time of intense conflicts and transformations.

He sought to demonstrate that reason (philosophy) and faith (theology) are not contradictory, but complementary. For him, the Church could not remain simply dogmatic, it needed to have a rational aspect. His thought was similar to that of the Jew of the previous century Ramban, and the Muslim Averroes.

Thomas Aquinas created the “Summa Theologica”, which is the masterpiece of Scholasticism, which synthesizes Catholic doctrine (God, Morality, Christ). Even today faculties of philosophy study this work, which contains, among other things, five proofs of the existence of God.

This movement called Scholasticism, created by Thomas Aquinas, took Christianity to the universities. Christianity left the temples and went to the universities.

There is a Cathedral in Rome called San Giovanni in Laterano, Saint John Lateran, considered the mother of the churches. It was built in the 4th century and dedicated to Jesus. Later, it became dedicated to John the Evangelist and John the Baptist. It also became the seat of the Roman Church. Later it was replaced by the church of Saint Peter. This is the church that Pope Innocent III, in his dream, saw Francis holding its base.

There were several Councils of Lateran, in honor of this church. In this century, the fourth Lateran council took place, with some striking themes. The first was the dogma of transubstantiation, previously much debated, but from then on it was decided that it was indeed a dogma, which could not be questioned. Every Catholic would have at a moment of the holy mass to celebrate the last supper of Jesus and receive communion.

The second theme debated was about the act of contrition: every Catholic should, at least once a year, in Holy Week for example, confess with their priest, tell their sins. A mandatory ritual, because the priest would be representing Jesus and recalling what He said to His disciples, that they would be doing this in His name to those whom they healed and forgave.

The issue of heresies was strongly discussed. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX institutionalized the practice, which had begun in 1184 with Pope Lucius III, the Inquisitorial Tribunal. As it was a tribunal of the Church, it came to be called the Holy Inquisition. It meant that everyone who opposed any practice of the Church would be judged by an ecclesiastical tribunal composed of bishops, cardinals and Dominicans.

This Inquisitorial tribunal initially had the aspect of judging ecclesiastical crimes, however, later and in a more distorted way, they not only judged, but also exploited, killed Jews, Muslims. People earned money if they denounced, and thus the Church kept the goods of the condemned, and enriched itself tremendously...

And it was not only witches, sorcerers, heretics, who were condemned, all those who had many possessions also, just for some small enmities with the Church, were also condemned and their goods confiscated. The Church confiscated the goods first and then condemned them to death...

A very rich century, with many dimensions of analysis. From the crusades, for example, a very interesting movement that began in the 11th century, crossed the 12th century and in this century intensifies. Curious is that the strategies on the Christian side were changing over time. In the first crusades, the objective was only to reconquer Jerusalem. However, after the fourth crusade, they had a different strategy. As they were not achieving their intent, the strategy was to take a territory as hostage and try to make an exchange. They then tried to take the territory of Egypt... But they did not succeed.

The objectives of the crusades were the most varied. There were also incursions in the Iberian Peninsula which, since 711, had been taken by the Muslims, ending up becoming the region of the Moorish-Muslims. Only the north of Spain and Portugal, the kingdom of Asturias, remained Christian.

The fourth crusade occurred from 1202 to 1204. Initially it was to take Jerusalem, but ended up deviating its route, going to Constantinople. The crusaders then fought the Eastern Christians there, who were Orthodox (the division had occurred in the 11th century, when the schism happened – “the division”), because there was a desire for predominance among the Christians themselves.

The fact is that that region returned to be, for a short period, between fifty and sixty years, Roman Catholic Apostolic, and no longer Orthodox Catholic. Later, the Eastern Church reconquered the territory, but was greatly weakened.

Around 1210 another movement arose that gained realization in 1212. They concluded that the objective continued to be to reconquer Jerusalem and that the next crusade should be led by children. This being one of the most absurd movements of the Church that happened in Europe. They used the sayings of Jesus, interpreted literally the verse: “Let the little children come to me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.

Two children, Stephen and Nicholas, gathered others and decided to make the children’s crusade, or the crusade of purity. It was a terrible movement...

The children were killed along the way, many were enslaved in Christian and Muslim places. It was a movement that historians remember today with great sorrow. First, because the Church allowed that to happen, it washed its hands and let the children go. The families themselves thought their children would return as heroes. They would return knights. But they were all exterminated or enslaved. A very obscure period of our history.

The crusades did not have only religious objectives, but also political, economic and territorial objectives. The main one was indeed to reconquer Jerusalem, but wherever they passed, they gained territories, trade routes, reconquering territories that were once Christian. It was a whole combination of interests involved.

The fifth crusade happened between the years 1217 to 1221. This was the crusade in which Francis of Assisi took part. This crusade did not go directly to Israel, it went to Egypt, because that is where the caliphate was. It was necessary to conquer Egypt and then take Jerusalem.

Very interesting, because the Christians achieved nothing. Francis, however, managed to speak with the sultan, Al Malik Al Kamil, nephew of Saladin. And what the Christians did not achieve, Francis achieved. However, the Christians did not want to make an agreement with the Muslims.

The sixth crusade happened between 1228 and 1229 and was led by Frederick II, king of Prussia, today Germany. It was also unsuccessful, but obtained some diplomatic victories. They managed free access for Christians to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, places of great pilgrimage for Christians.

The seventh and eighth crusades, led by Louis IX, king of France, considered the saint king for his noble qualities, for his developed moral aspect. He was an excellent ruler for France, for his subjects. He was eminently Christian, religious, went to churches. He had a profession of faith: to recover the Holy Land. Later he would help professor Kardec in the codification of the Doctrine of Spirits. Today he, Saint Louis, is the protector of France.

In the seventh crusade, Louis IX is captured and the army is decimated. It was a failure, but when he managed to free himself, he returned again with the eighth crusade for another attempt. Another failure and this time, Louis IV was killed and the crusade was abandoned. Besides being a very beloved king in France he became a true martyr of Christianity.

The ninth crusade happened between 1271 and 1272, it was led by king Edward I, of England. Totally unsuccessful. It was the end of the crusades as military expeditions. However, in 1291, the Templars tried to make a last attempt, but it was in vain, because a small city in the north of Israel, Acre, which still had a Christian predominance, was taken by the Muslims.

The crusades ended definitively. The kingdom of Israel, Jerusalem, which was the great objective, remained eminently Muslim. And, until today there are many struggles there. A territory that has passed through so many hands...

The crusades were initiatives that, motivated by Christians who believed they had the right to retake Jerusalem, which was in the hands of the Muslims, undertook several military campaigns, countless people were killed in these attempts. Europe lived almost two hundred years of an intermittence of religious wars. With this, the fire of intolerance between Muslims and Christians was lit and it is in these crusades that a conception arose in the Muslim world that Christians are their enemies. The religious struggle against the infidels rose, and this was strengthened in this period, the Christians provoked this type of situation and, in the end, nothing was resolved. Jerusalem remained in the hands of the Muslims and the hostility between Christians and them became even worse...

Bayt Al-Hickmah, the House of Wisdom located in Baghdad, already mentioned in previous centuries and which was an apex of knowledge, was contaminated by hatred toward Christians. And it promoted a transformation, a degeneration so strong, that when the crusades ended, the House of Wisdom was completely corroded by hatred, anger, intolerance, by the non-acceptance of the Christian world and all that beautiful wisdom that existed gave way, by human intolerance, and it lost the beauty it had.

Between the years 1209 and 1229, the Albigensian crusade occurred, in which Christians fought and killed Christians. There was in the south of France, in the region of Languedoc, a city called Albi, hence the name of the crusade. The Christians who lived there were known as Cathars, they had a way of life different from Roman Catholic Christians. They believed in immortality, were reincarnationists, had a philosophy of life based on ethics, morality, proximity between people.

But the Church hated the Cathars because they did not start from the supremacy of the Church, or of the Pope. For them the supremacy was called morality, love, living the Gospel of Jesus. But the imputations of the Roman Church over the Cathars were several.

1- They were considered Manichaeans, a sect that arose in the 3rd century in Persia, by Mani. They considered that there was a conflict of extremes, between the spiritual plane, the true one, and the human plane, which should be rejected.

2- They were Gnostics, because for them, the interpretation of chapter XIV, verse 6, of the Gospel of John the Evangelist: “I am the way, the truth and the life”, was not the acceptance of the person of Jesus, but of the truths brought by Jesus. So, for the Cathars, it was not necessary to say that they accepted Jesus, but that they tried to live as Jesus lived. For the Church, they were Gnostics, for this interpretation.

3- They were also considered Docetists, because they did not believe that Jesus had materialized, becoming flesh. For them Jesus was a spiritual presence.

The Cathars had an impressive magnetism, which spread. They converted people and the Church, however, saw this as a danger. The difficulty in accepting that someone could think differently from it was what motivated its anger against the Cathars.

Pope Innocent III, considered one of the greatest of the Church, first sent the Dominicans to warn them to convert to the “true” Christianity. But they refused.

Later, military crusades went to the region of the Cathars and exterminated them, men, women and children were killed, were massacred. It is estimated that it was around one million Cathars, French Christians, killed. There was no mercy... The order was to exterminate all so that the idea would not spread...

When the crusader forces went to the Middle East to fight armed knights, they fought on equal terms, but when they went down to the south of France to fight the Cathars, these were not an army, it was a religious community, without weapons...

Another character of this century was Peter Waldo, a merchant from Lyon, in France. At a certain moment of his life, analyzing the religious proposals of the Church, in which its foundation was the Pope, he came to the conclusion that the foundation should be the Scriptures.

He took a vow of poverty and began to live the Gospel, to live like Jesus and people began to follow him. The Church, then, was bothered by this new movement that arose and began to persecute them. However, the Waldensians, as they were called, were not restricted to a single territory, like the Cathars, they spread throughout Europe and were not as threatening to the Church. They did not have great preaching powers and did not form communities. It was more a thought.

The Church persecuted them, but did not exterminate them. The fact is that this idea, this thought, was a birthplace of what in the 16th century, beginning with Martin Luther, would be the Protestant Reformation...