Pilgrimage Hardships and Crusading Thought after the Fall of Jerusalem (1070s)

Timeline

1. 1073Jerusalem · PalestineSeljuk commander Atsiz seized Jerusalem from the Fatimids, placing the Holy Land under Sunni Turkic control, altering the previously relatively tolerant pilgrimage environment and drawing the attention of the Western Church.
2. 1074–1078Pilgrimage routes to the Holy Land · LevantPilgrims from Francia, Lorraine, and elsewhere reported robbery, heavy tolls, and harassment of Christians in Anatolia and Syria; some accounts claimed churches in the Holy Land were destroyed—though details are disputed—intensifying the Western European impression that the Holy Land was in peril.
3. 1078–1080Western Europe · Western EuropeNarratives of pilgrim suffering and Byzantine envoys' appeals spread through Western European courts and monasteries; the idea of an 'armed pilgrimage' and theological arguments for recovering Jerusalem gradually took shape, providing a decade of public-opinion groundwork for the 1095 Council of Clermont's call to crusade.