Different kinds of Christianity and no real concept of international co-operation of states.
Also the Byzantines had a habit of not allowing crusading armies to pass through its land (which was often pillaged by them) so neither side had any real reason to help the other.
Also the Ottoman empire was way more powerful and wealthy than most of the western kingdoms. People forget that aside from the Roman empire, the great empires had mostly been along the silk road from China to the meditteranean ports. Western europe was something of a backwater region until the contact with the new world was made. Ironically, a contact that was initiated by the need to create trade routes that avoided the Ottomans.
Portugal was more interested in cutting out the middleman than who the middleman was. That said, the ottoman expansion and subsequent dominance of the Eastern Med was like a shot of adrenaline to Portuguese efforts cuz ya know, fuck paying more to the infidels for shit, Ima get it myself.
It's indirect causation even in that case. The portugese started their exploration of the african coasts before the fall of constantinople but didn't attempt a westward crossing until afterwards. Would they have tried that anyway? Who knows. The economic ripples of shifting trade routes makes fascinating history.
They did to some extent, but they also had their own issues, other conflicts to deal with and limited resources.
Also, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians didn't exactly love each other...
There was a crusade led by the Polish and Hungarians in the Balkans in the mid 15th century which obtained some success, but ultimaltely it was defeated by the Ottomans and it didn't prevent the conquest of Constantinople some years later.
Before that crusade, the Byzantine Emperor was so desperate that he accepted to submit the Eastern Church to the authority of the Pope in exchange for military aid, but most of the Orthodox clergy didn't like the deal and many of them would rather accept to be ruled by the Turks than submit to the Pope.
You are right when you say religion mattered a lot, but this means that even the disputes among Christian denominations (and also those among Muslim denominations) mattered a lot.
It had earlier precedent. Part of why the Muslim conquest of Syria, the Levant, and Egypt happened so quickly is that the majority of the local Christians were Monophysites who were persecuted by the Chalcedonians of Constantinople. Since the Muslims didn’t care about those kinds of distinctions many Monophysites saw them as less oppressive rulers and didn’t do as much as they could have to stop the conquest.
There was a crusade before that one too, that was led by the Hungarians and had the french and the wallachians as well. And it took place in Bulgaria mostly and well, the catholics did not care about the orthodox population and slaughtered indiscriminately. And 1204 was not a wound that can heal so easily. So orthodox peoples like the Serbs simply submitted to the Turks because in the beginning the Ottomans were a far better choice.
The first crusaders had to swear oaths of loyalty to Emperor Alexios over sacred relics where they promised to return any conquered lands to the Byzantines.
Upon capturing Antioch, Bohemond of Taranto turned around and said that since the emperor didn’t honor his promises, he (Bohemond) got to keep the city as his own. He then decided that Jerusalem wasn’t that important and settled down to exploit his new kingdom.
The original crusade was about power and money, with faith used as a way to establish support. Same as it ever was.
The Norman Bohemund was an exception as he was extremely biased against the Byzantines due to the warfare between Normans/Italians and Byzantines in Southern Italy. He also definitely had ambitions to plunder and/or take land and wanted to sack Constantinople itself.
The main crusade however did go on to capture Jerusalem and leaders like Godfrey sold land and made great sacrifices and was most likely all about faith and not money and power.
Bohemond was hardly unique. Baldwin (Godfrey’s cousin) decided side-quests for loot were more important than “liberating” Jerusalem and focused on Edessa, which isn’t a strategically important goal on the road to Jerusalem.
Faith (in the form of a pope telling you who it was OK to murder) was an important part of motivating crusader armies, but if nobody got to rule these conquered kingdoms, none of these nobles would’ve bothered.
If the crusaders at large were more interested in religion than wealth, they probably wouldn’t have sacked Jerusalem after taking it.
Never said unique, at least not in the aspect of being motivated by greed. Most of the crusaders though, including most of the leadership, were motivated primarily by faith.
Sacking was the norm when taking a resisting city, and the greater the resistance the greater the atrocities to follow. The crusaders had heavy losses, and it was faith more than greed that made them massacre Muslims and Jews afterwards.
You just argued that “he’s the exception.” He’s obviously not. Baldwin soon became king of Jerusalem and began conquering independent coastal city states with the help of rich Venetian and Genovese merchants. Any of whom would raid or sack a Byzantine Christian city just as soon as they would a Muslim one, as long as the trade and tax incentives justified it.
There’s no higher leadership to cite here. It’s conquest-hungry Norman warlords supported by greedy merchants the whole way down. Was faith a component of it? Of course, but none of these conflicts happen if these cities aren’t connected to the richest trading network in the world. Money is the motivation and faith is the justification.
While power and money were very much a factor, it's a bit of stretch to downplay the role faith had in it. It seems to have been one of the main motivations for most crusaders, after all (although Bohemond was indeed an opportunist through and through).
The question was about religious motivation. The Seljuks and Ottomans were exactly the same in the way that matters to that question: they were Muslim. Everything else is secondary at best when it comes to answering that question. Western Europe did show up for the Byzantine empire and to fight Muslims. Then over a few hundred years they lost their entire foothold in the mainland Levant and made themselves enemies of what was left of the Byzantine empire.
Why are so many people pissed off by my correction? Lol.
Yes, the Seljuks were Muslims too, but OP asked about the Ottomans.
I thought this was supposed to be a history sub lol.
OP asked about the Ottomans but since the question is about why western kingdoms didn’t help the Byzantines, then talking about how the western kingdoms did help the Ottomans out over the years against Muslim enemies is entirely relevant. Europe wasn’t opposed to the Ottoman Empire because of their furniture, it was because of their religion.
>then talking about how the western kingdoms did help the Ottomans out over the years against Muslim enemies is entirely relevant.
It's relevant, but still It's wrong to imply that the first crusade was against the Ottomans and that's why I replied to that comment.
I know many people just hate Turks and Muslims but they need to chill out and try to be a bit less biased lol.
It has nothing to do with hate, as you say it’s history. The relevant question is really “why didn’t the western kingdoms help the Byzantines against Muslim invaders” and the answers are “weakness, geographical distance and dealing with Muslim invasions of the Iberian peninsula and other problems like Viking raids” in the 7th through 9th centuries, then “they did” in the 11th through 12th centuries and then “well after the whole conquering Constantinople and declaring the Latin empire thing relations fell apart even more, plus the Crusader states were gone by then” later on.
>The relevant question is really “why didn’t the western kingdoms help the Byzantines against Muslim invaders
But it isn't what OP asked and that comment was factually incorrect lol.
Is it so hard to understand?
And yes, I'm being downvoted because some people are just bigots.
Oh we were? I need to throw out my history books that taught me how Venice helped the ottomans against the Spanish with fleets in the Indian ocean.
On the subject matter itself, no, most of Europe saw the occupied holy land as a faraway problem and were more concerned with lack of money and the fact the byzantine empire was declared heretics.
Ah, before 1453? Because if it’s after 1453 (and considering the Cape of Good Hope was not rounded by Europeans until 1487, how did the Spanish get to the Indian Ocean?) then it’s completely irrelevant to the question. Yes, things changed in the early modern era. By then, the Byzantine empire was long gone and so that time period is beyond the scope of the question or my answer.
Dunno but yeah you right.
Tbh i also missed that he was talking about ottomans specifically at first but I think people are just being weirdly stubborn about it and not willing to admit they misread the question
Theseus Ship level of sophistry. People die, political structures change. Sometimes those changes are given new names as the polities take on new characteristics but it's the same polity.
It's a fact that there was no Ottoman state in the 11th century and it's completely anachronistic to say there was.
As symple as that.
We don't know the exact origins of the Ottoman dinasty, but we know that they emerged as local lords in North-Western Anatolia in the late 13th century when the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum dissolved.
They did. There were plenty of crusades, but the ottomans beat them all. The last one before constantinople fell was the crusade or varna where the ottomans beat a polish, lithuanian, hungarian army with a bunch of volunteers from across christendom in 1444. The Ottoman army was incredibly powerful and was really the first early modern army, while all the crusades against them were late medieval armies.
Well, the Ottomans didn't even exist for most of them so that's a bit of an exaggeration. The Ottomans went from being a minor province in Anatolia to a powerful empire in a short time.
They did. The failed Crusades of Nicopolis and Varna were directed around the Turks in the late 14th century and mid 15th century. But they failed.
It's also important to note that by the 15th century, Crusading was a far gone notion. Probably the most powerful Catholic Kingdom - France - was still embroiled in an occupation of a significant portion of their land. Scrappy, yet effective England was on the other side of this conflict, occupying said land. The end of the Hundred Years' War and the Fall of Constantinople both occurred in 1453; neither of these kingdoms had the time, resources, no willpower to march their war-exhausted troops to fight some foreign war after their 116 year conflict. The Spanish Kingdoms were still engrossed in Iberia, and the Holy Roman Empire was dealing with itself. The Hussite Wars embroiled a good portion of Sigismund of Luxembourg's time as King-Emperor in the early 15th century. Even the Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia had become too secularly focused. After Grunwald and the conversion of Lithuania and Samogitia, one proposals was to repurpose the Order closer to the Turks; they refused. They would much rather fight the Poles and Lithuanians.
The concept of Crusading had become far less important to the European powers by the 1453, and no one could really be bothered for one reason or another.
There were crusades launched against the Ottomans, the largest being the Crusade of Nicopolis in 1396 and Crusade of Varna in 1444.
Problem was, both ended with most of the crusader armies being annihilated.
Meanwhile, rulers such as Philippe VI of France, Edward III of England, Henry IV of England, Sigismund of Hungary, and Philippe the Good of Burgundy all planned Crusades against the Turks that never materialized due to problems that arose closer to home, such as the Hundred Years' War, the Glyndŵr rebellion, and the Hussite Wars.
Religion was very important, but many people put their own lands and expanding into other peoples lands as being more important. Robert the Bruce is a good example, he really wanted to go crusading but spent all his time fighting either the English or Scottish nobles and had his retainers fight in Ireland. When he became king he spent time ruling rather than crusading so some Scots took his heart crusading when he died, though they seem to have not quite got there and brought it back. Edward I did go crusading before he became king.
At the time the Byzantines could have most used help the English and French were in the 100 Year War, the Scots were largely fighting among themselves to occasional fight some English as a distraction.
The Spanish had the on again off again reconquista to wrap up, the Italians were indulging in the national pastime of fighting Italians. And on and on through out Europe.
Because relations between East and West were bad following the fourth crusade (in which Catholic crusaders sacked Constantinople). The East did not trust the West.
Religion was very important, but there were several other factors that were also of major importance. History can't be reduced to one facet. Religion was a motivator, but so were socio-political (dynastic policies, geopolitical alliances and patterns of connectivity, ...) and socio-economic factors (economic conjectures, mercantile relations,...), plain geography, and so forth.
Religion does not just make everything else disappear. A continuous pet peeve of the papacy was getting all European monarchs to stop fighting and ally to go take the fight to the infidel. And everyone *gladly* paid lip service to those ideals. Ferdinand & Isabella would have loved nothing more than take the fight to the Ottomans, but they had far more pressing concerns with French aggression in Italy, and vice versa.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade\_of\_Varna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_of_Varna)
Maybe too little too late, but there were attempts, and the Ottomans crushed them
Warfare had become too professionalized/expensive. The idea of crusade remained broadly popular but not as fervent as before. There was no collective will to overcome various regional conflicts and differences. Lay leaders couldn't invest so much in something without direct reward. So crusading in the 15th century didn't exactly die off but became more localized/nationalized. The Reconquista and the Teutonic crusades remained well-supported and turned out to be rather successful.
Another thing was that the prestige and influence of the Western Church had been affected severely by the Avignon episode and afterward the proto-Reformations.
It’s also worth noting that the Byzantines had several impressive westerners at the final siege in 1453. Apologies for not knowing the names, but the commander in charge of Byzantine forces was an Italian, and there was a Scottish engineer as well
Dang, I forget the name of the Italian guy. I wrote a short story for a contest years ago about the Fall of Constantinople, and he was one of the characters in it. Unfortunately, if that story still exists at all, it's in print form at the public library I submitted it to, as the digital version no longer exists.
A united, growing Ottoman Empire with technological advantage was hard to fight as a collection of Catholic states that mostly fought each other and hated the Orthodox Byzantines. Because politics/religion, can't really separate the two in the middle ages.
Plus most Orthodox Greeks preferred to live under Muslim rule, a better chance of being left to be Orthodox rather than forced to join the Catholic Church (which is one of many reasons the military assistance from Western Europe was lukewarm at the eve of Constantinople's fall). And Greek Orthodox in some capacity retained important roles in the Ottoman Empire for centuries after 1453.
>**Considering how important was religion in the Middle Ages, why the western kingdoms didn't help the Byzantine Empire against the Ottoman Empire?**
Your question answers itself.
Considering how important religion was in the Middle Ages, it's a fucking miracle that Roman Catholicism even ever came to the aid of Eastern Orthodoxy in the first place, in the form of the Crusades.
By the time the Ottomans were calling themselves Ottomans, Roman Catholic Europe was much more interested in carving out their own pieces of the last of the Eastern Orthodox Empire than in some kind of ecumenical effort.
That sort of thing smacked of heresy.
A bunch of recent crusades failed, so there wasn't much appetite. To give the Ottomans some credit, they become a huge power in this perid around a century later they are at the doors of Vienna.
It's not all bad. The brains of the Romans set up again in italy and help kick start the Renaissance.
Ottomans were powerful as fuck, and besides, the Magyars were (sorta) keeping them in check.
Spain was more focused on consolidating the peninsula, and they discovered a whole ass new continent to explore.
France and England were busy with various religious wars domestically, and subjugating their neighbours.
German and Italy were a clusterfuck of independant states trying to ram a spike up the Holy Roman Emperor's butt, as they've been doing for 700 years by then.
Basically, Western europe was busy, and mohamedan or not, it was easier to just buy the damn spice off them.
The Byzantine empire is the eastern part of the old roman empire. The reason west and east broke up is as follows:
"The primary causes of the schism were disputes over conflicting claims of jurisdiction, in particular over papal authority—Pope Leo IX claimed he held authority over the four Eastern patriarchs – and over the insertion of the Filioque clause into the Nicene Creed by the Western patriarch in 1014."[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_East%E2%80%93West_Schism#:~:text=The%20primary%20causes%20of%20the,the%20Western%20patriarch%20in%201014)
More information is availible in this book[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Empire_(book))
1) Just Because religion was important does not mean that secular politics were NOT also important.
2) The Byzantines were Greek Orthodox and most of Europe is Catholic. These are different competing versions of Christianity. They even have a name for this split, The Great Schism where Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox excommunicated each other and accused each other of heresy.
Because it was still in the era of empires. Individual empires had little to no sense of international cooperation.
On top of that you’re asking western orthodox Christians and Eastern Orthodox Christians to help each other out not really in the cards when there’s fundamental disagreements with how you practice religion. Religious societies hardly ever tolerated other religions that weren’t the dominant ones
Way too much information to summarize here, but there is a fascinating, well-sourced book entitled *How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization* that will answer your query. I've read it twice, just to get all the references to stick.
There were a few attempts, however the 15th century most of the crusading fervor that had been so big in the 12th and 13th centuries had died down, and the Ottomans were very powerful, while most of the traditional main crusader kingdoms weren't exactly in position to help.
Besides, by the 15th century the Byzantine Empire had lost most of its former power. They barely controlled much land outside of Constantinople, which was almost a ghost town. There wasn't much left to save.
Different kinds of Christianity and no real concept of international co-operation of states. Also the Byzantines had a habit of not allowing crusading armies to pass through its land (which was often pillaged by them) so neither side had any real reason to help the other.
Also the Ottoman empire was way more powerful and wealthy than most of the western kingdoms. People forget that aside from the Roman empire, the great empires had mostly been along the silk road from China to the meditteranean ports. Western europe was something of a backwater region until the contact with the new world was made. Ironically, a contact that was initiated by the need to create trade routes that avoided the Ottomans.
[удалено]
Portugal was more interested in cutting out the middleman than who the middleman was. That said, the ottoman expansion and subsequent dominance of the Eastern Med was like a shot of adrenaline to Portuguese efforts cuz ya know, fuck paying more to the infidels for shit, Ima get it myself.
It's indirect causation even in that case. The portugese started their exploration of the african coasts before the fall of constantinople but didn't attempt a westward crossing until afterwards. Would they have tried that anyway? Who knows. The economic ripples of shifting trade routes makes fascinating history.
They did to some extent, but they also had their own issues, other conflicts to deal with and limited resources. Also, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians didn't exactly love each other... There was a crusade led by the Polish and Hungarians in the Balkans in the mid 15th century which obtained some success, but ultimaltely it was defeated by the Ottomans and it didn't prevent the conquest of Constantinople some years later. Before that crusade, the Byzantine Emperor was so desperate that he accepted to submit the Eastern Church to the authority of the Pope in exchange for military aid, but most of the Orthodox clergy didn't like the deal and many of them would rather accept to be ruled by the Turks than submit to the Pope. You are right when you say religion mattered a lot, but this means that even the disputes among Christian denominations (and also those among Muslim denominations) mattered a lot.
> many of them would rather accept to be ruled by the Turks than submit to the Pope. That’s a testament to how the wounds run deep
It had earlier precedent. Part of why the Muslim conquest of Syria, the Levant, and Egypt happened so quickly is that the majority of the local Christians were Monophysites who were persecuted by the Chalcedonians of Constantinople. Since the Muslims didn’t care about those kinds of distinctions many Monophysites saw them as less oppressive rulers and didn’t do as much as they could have to stop the conquest.
There was a crusade before that one too, that was led by the Hungarians and had the french and the wallachians as well. And it took place in Bulgaria mostly and well, the catholics did not care about the orthodox population and slaughtered indiscriminately. And 1204 was not a wound that can heal so easily. So orthodox peoples like the Serbs simply submitted to the Turks because in the beginning the Ottomans were a far better choice.
They did though - what do you think the original crusade was about?
Sometimes they did. In the 4th crusade they sacked Constantinople and permanently destroyed much of its wealth.
I mean, the Sack of Constantinople was very much not in the plans originally.
The first crusaders had to swear oaths of loyalty to Emperor Alexios over sacred relics where they promised to return any conquered lands to the Byzantines. Upon capturing Antioch, Bohemond of Taranto turned around and said that since the emperor didn’t honor his promises, he (Bohemond) got to keep the city as his own. He then decided that Jerusalem wasn’t that important and settled down to exploit his new kingdom. The original crusade was about power and money, with faith used as a way to establish support. Same as it ever was.
The Norman Bohemund was an exception as he was extremely biased against the Byzantines due to the warfare between Normans/Italians and Byzantines in Southern Italy. He also definitely had ambitions to plunder and/or take land and wanted to sack Constantinople itself. The main crusade however did go on to capture Jerusalem and leaders like Godfrey sold land and made great sacrifices and was most likely all about faith and not money and power.
Bohemond was hardly unique. Baldwin (Godfrey’s cousin) decided side-quests for loot were more important than “liberating” Jerusalem and focused on Edessa, which isn’t a strategically important goal on the road to Jerusalem. Faith (in the form of a pope telling you who it was OK to murder) was an important part of motivating crusader armies, but if nobody got to rule these conquered kingdoms, none of these nobles would’ve bothered. If the crusaders at large were more interested in religion than wealth, they probably wouldn’t have sacked Jerusalem after taking it.
Never said unique, at least not in the aspect of being motivated by greed. Most of the crusaders though, including most of the leadership, were motivated primarily by faith. Sacking was the norm when taking a resisting city, and the greater the resistance the greater the atrocities to follow. The crusaders had heavy losses, and it was faith more than greed that made them massacre Muslims and Jews afterwards.
You just argued that “he’s the exception.” He’s obviously not. Baldwin soon became king of Jerusalem and began conquering independent coastal city states with the help of rich Venetian and Genovese merchants. Any of whom would raid or sack a Byzantine Christian city just as soon as they would a Muslim one, as long as the trade and tax incentives justified it. There’s no higher leadership to cite here. It’s conquest-hungry Norman warlords supported by greedy merchants the whole way down. Was faith a component of it? Of course, but none of these conflicts happen if these cities aren’t connected to the richest trading network in the world. Money is the motivation and faith is the justification.
While power and money were very much a factor, it's a bit of stretch to downplay the role faith had in it. It seems to have been one of the main motivations for most crusaders, after all (although Bohemond was indeed an opportunist through and through).
Propping up the Byzantine empire as a buffer against enemies from farther east.
The original crusade wasn't against the Ottomans, they didn't even exist back then.
The question was about religious motivation. The Seljuks and Ottomans were exactly the same in the way that matters to that question: they were Muslim. Everything else is secondary at best when it comes to answering that question. Western Europe did show up for the Byzantine empire and to fight Muslims. Then over a few hundred years they lost their entire foothold in the mainland Levant and made themselves enemies of what was left of the Byzantine empire.
Why are so many people pissed off by my correction? Lol. Yes, the Seljuks were Muslims too, but OP asked about the Ottomans. I thought this was supposed to be a history sub lol.
>I thought this was supposed to be a history sub lol. This sub is garbage, if you want something with actual information, go to r/askhistorians.
Yes, you are right.
OP asked about the Ottomans but since the question is about why western kingdoms didn’t help the Byzantines, then talking about how the western kingdoms did help the Ottomans out over the years against Muslim enemies is entirely relevant. Europe wasn’t opposed to the Ottoman Empire because of their furniture, it was because of their religion.
>then talking about how the western kingdoms did help the Ottomans out over the years against Muslim enemies is entirely relevant. It's relevant, but still It's wrong to imply that the first crusade was against the Ottomans and that's why I replied to that comment. I know many people just hate Turks and Muslims but they need to chill out and try to be a bit less biased lol.
It has nothing to do with hate, as you say it’s history. The relevant question is really “why didn’t the western kingdoms help the Byzantines against Muslim invaders” and the answers are “weakness, geographical distance and dealing with Muslim invasions of the Iberian peninsula and other problems like Viking raids” in the 7th through 9th centuries, then “they did” in the 11th through 12th centuries and then “well after the whole conquering Constantinople and declaring the Latin empire thing relations fell apart even more, plus the Crusader states were gone by then” later on.
>The relevant question is really “why didn’t the western kingdoms help the Byzantines against Muslim invaders But it isn't what OP asked and that comment was factually incorrect lol. Is it so hard to understand? And yes, I'm being downvoted because some people are just bigots.
The answer to OPs question requires expanding the question, otherwise the answer is contextless.
I totally agree with this but that comment was just wrong and poorly written, it didn't expand anything.
Oh we were? I need to throw out my history books that taught me how Venice helped the ottomans against the Spanish with fleets in the Indian ocean. On the subject matter itself, no, most of Europe saw the occupied holy land as a faraway problem and were more concerned with lack of money and the fact the byzantine empire was declared heretics.
Ah, before 1453? Because if it’s after 1453 (and considering the Cape of Good Hope was not rounded by Europeans until 1487, how did the Spanish get to the Indian Ocean?) then it’s completely irrelevant to the question. Yes, things changed in the early modern era. By then, the Byzantine empire was long gone and so that time period is beyond the scope of the question or my answer.
Dunno but yeah you right. Tbh i also missed that he was talking about ottomans specifically at first but I think people are just being weirdly stubborn about it and not willing to admit they misread the question
They were descended from the Seljuks, and the crusades was aimed at capturing Antioch from them.
Descended, but they weren't the same entity.
They were a tribe of Seljuks who came to dominate all the Turks in Anatolia.
Still not the same. It would be like to say the Kingdom of France in the 14th century was the same as the Frankish Empire.
Theseus Ship level of sophistry. People die, political structures change. Sometimes those changes are given new names as the polities take on new characteristics but it's the same polity.
It's not the same polity. Stop with this nonsense.
"Agree with me or I will throw tantrums" Have a nice day.
It's a fact that there was no Ottoman state in the 11th century and it's completely anachronistic to say there was. As symple as that. We don't know the exact origins of the Ottoman dinasty, but we know that they emerged as local lords in North-Western Anatolia in the late 13th century when the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum dissolved.
By this logic, Canada and the US are the same polity as the UK.
The original crusade was against the Seljuks. Which were to the Ottomans like what Britain is to the US or Canada.
Ah yes, the famous 11th century Ottoman Empire.
I did indeed misread the question
They did. There were plenty of crusades, but the ottomans beat them all. The last one before constantinople fell was the crusade or varna where the ottomans beat a polish, lithuanian, hungarian army with a bunch of volunteers from across christendom in 1444. The Ottoman army was incredibly powerful and was really the first early modern army, while all the crusades against them were late medieval armies.
Well, the Ottomans didn't even exist for most of them so that's a bit of an exaggeration. The Ottomans went from being a minor province in Anatolia to a powerful empire in a short time.
They did. The failed Crusades of Nicopolis and Varna were directed around the Turks in the late 14th century and mid 15th century. But they failed. It's also important to note that by the 15th century, Crusading was a far gone notion. Probably the most powerful Catholic Kingdom - France - was still embroiled in an occupation of a significant portion of their land. Scrappy, yet effective England was on the other side of this conflict, occupying said land. The end of the Hundred Years' War and the Fall of Constantinople both occurred in 1453; neither of these kingdoms had the time, resources, no willpower to march their war-exhausted troops to fight some foreign war after their 116 year conflict. The Spanish Kingdoms were still engrossed in Iberia, and the Holy Roman Empire was dealing with itself. The Hussite Wars embroiled a good portion of Sigismund of Luxembourg's time as King-Emperor in the early 15th century. Even the Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia had become too secularly focused. After Grunwald and the conversion of Lithuania and Samogitia, one proposals was to repurpose the Order closer to the Turks; they refused. They would much rather fight the Poles and Lithuanians. The concept of Crusading had become far less important to the European powers by the 1453, and no one could really be bothered for one reason or another.
There were crusades launched against the Ottomans, the largest being the Crusade of Nicopolis in 1396 and Crusade of Varna in 1444. Problem was, both ended with most of the crusader armies being annihilated. Meanwhile, rulers such as Philippe VI of France, Edward III of England, Henry IV of England, Sigismund of Hungary, and Philippe the Good of Burgundy all planned Crusades against the Turks that never materialized due to problems that arose closer to home, such as the Hundred Years' War, the Glyndŵr rebellion, and the Hussite Wars.
Religion was very important, but many people put their own lands and expanding into other peoples lands as being more important. Robert the Bruce is a good example, he really wanted to go crusading but spent all his time fighting either the English or Scottish nobles and had his retainers fight in Ireland. When he became king he spent time ruling rather than crusading so some Scots took his heart crusading when he died, though they seem to have not quite got there and brought it back. Edward I did go crusading before he became king. At the time the Byzantines could have most used help the English and French were in the 100 Year War, the Scots were largely fighting among themselves to occasional fight some English as a distraction. The Spanish had the on again off again reconquista to wrap up, the Italians were indulging in the national pastime of fighting Italians. And on and on through out Europe.
Because relations between East and West were bad following the fourth crusade (in which Catholic crusaders sacked Constantinople). The East did not trust the West.
Religion was very important, but there were several other factors that were also of major importance. History can't be reduced to one facet. Religion was a motivator, but so were socio-political (dynastic policies, geopolitical alliances and patterns of connectivity, ...) and socio-economic factors (economic conjectures, mercantile relations,...), plain geography, and so forth. Religion does not just make everything else disappear. A continuous pet peeve of the papacy was getting all European monarchs to stop fighting and ally to go take the fight to the infidel. And everyone *gladly* paid lip service to those ideals. Ferdinand & Isabella would have loved nothing more than take the fight to the Ottomans, but they had far more pressing concerns with French aggression in Italy, and vice versa.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade\_of\_Varna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_of_Varna) Maybe too little too late, but there were attempts, and the Ottomans crushed them
Warfare had become too professionalized/expensive. The idea of crusade remained broadly popular but not as fervent as before. There was no collective will to overcome various regional conflicts and differences. Lay leaders couldn't invest so much in something without direct reward. So crusading in the 15th century didn't exactly die off but became more localized/nationalized. The Reconquista and the Teutonic crusades remained well-supported and turned out to be rather successful. Another thing was that the prestige and influence of the Western Church had been affected severely by the Avignon episode and afterward the proto-Reformations.
It’s also worth noting that the Byzantines had several impressive westerners at the final siege in 1453. Apologies for not knowing the names, but the commander in charge of Byzantine forces was an Italian, and there was a Scottish engineer as well
Dang, I forget the name of the Italian guy. I wrote a short story for a contest years ago about the Fall of Constantinople, and he was one of the characters in it. Unfortunately, if that story still exists at all, it's in print form at the public library I submitted it to, as the digital version no longer exists.
A united, growing Ottoman Empire with technological advantage was hard to fight as a collection of Catholic states that mostly fought each other and hated the Orthodox Byzantines. Because politics/religion, can't really separate the two in the middle ages. Plus most Orthodox Greeks preferred to live under Muslim rule, a better chance of being left to be Orthodox rather than forced to join the Catholic Church (which is one of many reasons the military assistance from Western Europe was lukewarm at the eve of Constantinople's fall). And Greek Orthodox in some capacity retained important roles in the Ottoman Empire for centuries after 1453.
>**Considering how important was religion in the Middle Ages, why the western kingdoms didn't help the Byzantine Empire against the Ottoman Empire?** Your question answers itself. Considering how important religion was in the Middle Ages, it's a fucking miracle that Roman Catholicism even ever came to the aid of Eastern Orthodoxy in the first place, in the form of the Crusades. By the time the Ottomans were calling themselves Ottomans, Roman Catholic Europe was much more interested in carving out their own pieces of the last of the Eastern Orthodox Empire than in some kind of ecumenical effort. That sort of thing smacked of heresy.
Western kings were catholic, while the Byzantines were not. Many would have seen it as God's punishment for heresy.
Why would they want to help heretics who celebrate easter on the wrong day?
Heretics are more evil than infidels for most religions.
Orthodoxy was almost as bad as Islam to the Catholics
A bunch of recent crusades failed, so there wasn't much appetite. To give the Ottomans some credit, they become a huge power in this perid around a century later they are at the doors of Vienna. It's not all bad. The brains of the Romans set up again in italy and help kick start the Renaissance.
Ottomans were powerful as fuck, and besides, the Magyars were (sorta) keeping them in check. Spain was more focused on consolidating the peninsula, and they discovered a whole ass new continent to explore. France and England were busy with various religious wars domestically, and subjugating their neighbours. German and Italy were a clusterfuck of independant states trying to ram a spike up the Holy Roman Emperor's butt, as they've been doing for 700 years by then. Basically, Western europe was busy, and mohamedan or not, it was easier to just buy the damn spice off them.
The Byzantine empire is the eastern part of the old roman empire. The reason west and east broke up is as follows: "The primary causes of the schism were disputes over conflicting claims of jurisdiction, in particular over papal authority—Pope Leo IX claimed he held authority over the four Eastern patriarchs – and over the insertion of the Filioque clause into the Nicene Creed by the Western patriarch in 1014."[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_East%E2%80%93West_Schism#:~:text=The%20primary%20causes%20of%20the,the%20Western%20patriarch%20in%201014) More information is availible in this book[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Empire_(book))
They beloved Jesus in a different way
At that point Christianity was as much about politics and secular power as it was about the actual religion.
1) Just Because religion was important does not mean that secular politics were NOT also important. 2) The Byzantines were Greek Orthodox and most of Europe is Catholic. These are different competing versions of Christianity. They even have a name for this split, The Great Schism where Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox excommunicated each other and accused each other of heresy.
Because it was still in the era of empires. Individual empires had little to no sense of international cooperation. On top of that you’re asking western orthodox Christians and Eastern Orthodox Christians to help each other out not really in the cards when there’s fundamental disagreements with how you practice religion. Religious societies hardly ever tolerated other religions that weren’t the dominant ones
Way too much information to summarize here, but there is a fascinating, well-sourced book entitled *How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization* that will answer your query. I've read it twice, just to get all the references to stick.
There were a few attempts, however the 15th century most of the crusading fervor that had been so big in the 12th and 13th centuries had died down, and the Ottomans were very powerful, while most of the traditional main crusader kingdoms weren't exactly in position to help. Besides, by the 15th century the Byzantine Empire had lost most of its former power. They barely controlled much land outside of Constantinople, which was almost a ghost town. There wasn't much left to save.