Many of them, however, were robbed and killed as they crossed through Muslim-controlled territories during their journey.ДЄround 1118, a French knight named Hugues de Payens created a military order along with eight relatives and acquaintances that became the Knights Templar, and they won the eventual support of the pope and a reputation for being fearsome fighters.

In 1099, Christian armies captured Jerusalem from Muslim control, and groups of pilgrims from across Western Europe started visiting the Holy Land. The Crusades began in 1095, when Pope Urban summoned a Christian army to fight its way to Jerusalem, and continued on and off until the end of the 15th century. (They also received more worldly rewards, such as papal protection of their property and forgiveness of some kinds of loan payments.) Crusaders, who wore red crosses on their coats to advertise their status, believed that their service would guarantee the remission of their sins and ensure that they could spend all eternity in Heaven. Toward the end of the 11th century, the Catholic Church began to authorize military expeditions, or Crusades, to expel Muslim вЂњinfidelsвЂќ from the Holy Land. The people of the Middle Ages had squandered the advancements of their predecessors, this argument went, and mired themselves instead in what 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon called вЂњbarbarism and religion.вЂќ Accordingly, they dismissed the period after the fall of Rome as a вЂњMiddleвЂќ or even вЂњDarkвЂќ age in which no scientific accomplishments had been made, no great art produced, no great leaders born. Starting around the 14th century, European thinkers, writers and artists began to look back and celebrate the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The phrase вЂњMiddle AgesвЂќ tells us more about the Renaissance that followed it than it does about the era itself. Many scholars call the era the вЂњmedieval periodвЂќ instead вЂњMiddle Ages,вЂќ they say, incorrectly implies that the period is an insignificant blip sandwiched between two much more important epochs.

People use the phrase вЂњMiddle AgesвЂќ to describe Europe between the fall of Rome in 476 CE and the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th century.

Civ city rome or grand ages rome