At the beginning of the 13th century the Christian world was facing a threat
It had never seen before from the Bosphorus to southern France cities were sacked and looted sacred relics stolen
cathedrals turned to rubble and as many as
20,000 Christians lost their lives in a single day and the man responsible
was the Pope
Innocent is a man with a plan a plan to expand that began with a span of land in Germanic
hands
The Hohenstaufen family of Holy Roman emperors has been trying to make their secular Germanic Kingdom at least slightly
Roman by laying claim to Rome but innocent isn't having it in an effort to stop them from going full habsburg
He takes the young recently orphaned Frederick horse often cuts off Cecily from the Holy Roman Empire gives it to Freddy and tells the HRE
find somebody new so the HRE holds an election England supports a chap named Otto the Pope also supports Otto and
excommunicates anyone who doesn't because Prince Philip the alternative is a Hohenstaufen and
Nobody likes Hohenstaufen z-- except for the french king also named Philip who declares come hell or high water?
Philips stick together bite me England
so now the entire kingdom of France is
excommunicated I guess but even with God ostensibly against them Philip and Philip prevailed until
Some Rando conveniently murdered Philip own sovereign in his sleep in the end
It didn't make much difference because someone feeds Otto after midnight he marches on Rome and tries to take over Sicily
So the Pope has no choice but to pull Frederick out of his back pocket
Making awkward alliance with France and declare war on Otto in England
I don't know about you, but I'm getting flashbacks to the League of camp play
thankfully this war only lasts long enough for one people flip-flop and Frederick takes the reins of the HRA and to avoid this sort of
Thing happening again. Innocently, it's down some rules where the Pope gets final say over who gets to be in charge
Continuing with the theme of attacking people you previously defended Pope
Questionable wants another crusade since the last one was a bit of a flop
Not just that that he taxes all of Western Europe, but mostly France to fund the endeavor
I'm not just calling on this crusade. I'm going to organize it myself. I claim full
Responsibility for this will be my eternal legacy
It was the fourth crusade. He led the fourth crusade if you're a fan of his you probably know the Fourth Crusade
But I can't not talk about the biggest bumble of the Middle Ages. So now
It went like this
Egypt and taken to rusul um's of France in the HRE are gonna go beat up Egypt
But they need boats Venice has boats Venice has boats for days, but the Crusaders ordered way too many boats
And now they can't pay because not enough people showed up. Don't worry says Venice. We'll give you our boats if you
Go beat up Zara. Oh
Woah, wow, we're Christians, we're Christians, God does not want this!
hmmmmm
Ego volo
Dandolo Vult!
and they ransacked the entire city. Then, while they're spending winter on the rubbles,
a message comes from
Constantinople: <Hey banished Prince here. Looks like you guys are strapped on cash.
Come to Constantinople put me in charge, I'll hook you up good, m'kay?>
Just like that base sack
Constantinople turns out that Prince they helped out he can't pay them even after melting down the city's priceless relics and selling off the gold
And silver, so the Crusaders stick around waiting for the money to come within two months. They'd already burned down the city
again, then the Prince turned Emperor dies and the new emperor comes out and tells them look we can't afford to take care of the
20% of our population. That's now homeless much less pay you off. So get lost
Then they light the city on fire for third time and decide screw it. It's ours now
Constantinople is a Crusader state
so
Word gets back to Pope negligent. What the hell did you do? What the hell did you do? You're all
Excommunicated this is unacceptable. It's a shame. I can't do anything about it
Oh, well better go establish some diocese but to his credit. He genuinely had no knowledge of the event until after it happened
He benefited from the situation, but he didn't intentionally launch a crusade against Christians for another five years until he literally did exactly that
Oh, yeah, this is where the story gets real crazy southern France northern Aragon area
there was a group of Christians called the Cather's now they were
Gnostics so their beliefs were pretty out there but not unheard of if you want more info check out this video by religion for breakfast
It's brilliant, but base, they thought everything worldly and material is evil everything spiritual
It was good one of the reasons this didn't sit
Well with the Catholic Church was because the Cather's believed that Old Testament
God was basically Satan since he made all the icky physical world stuff, but Jesus still checked out with them a New Testament
God was totally a okay
So the Catholics weren't big fans and the Cather's for their part didn't really want to be part of the Catholic Church anyway
But there was one big
problem in trying to crusade against the Cather's which they figured out when trying to purge the town of busy a
So, ah, how are we supposed to tell which ones are Cather's?
well, I
Better kill everybody just to be safe and in proud Crusader fashion
They burned down the entire town deidre land all I mean
we're talking somewhere between angry Genghis Khan and Sodom and Gomorrah levels of destruction here if
Contemporary sources are to be believed take a second and imagine if tomorrow the Pope decided that's it
No more Mormons and napalm Salt Lake City makes barring Jews from public office and making non-christians wear identifying clothes look positively tame in comparison
And that in pokeman level introduces a bunch of new laws, which was actually pretty significant
I just don't have time to go over all of them. But basically he was declaring to Christians throughout Europe
I'm still the boss of you plus he got transubstantiation sorted out and put it then to trial by ordeal. Yeah
Alright credit where credit is due then he started organizing another crusade this time with a notable exclusion of Venice at this point
Who knows what city is gonna be cremated? Maybe it'll be Jerusalem. Maybe it'll be Stockholm
Who knows but before he got the chance to find out he caught a fever and died
Hey, it's been a while things got a little crazy the last few months had to take a hiatus
Not sure what the future holds so for now videos come out when they come out just be sure to subscribe
Maybe even click that Bell so you don't miss the next time I come out of my cave Cheers