Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 307 The Origin of the Fourth Crusade

There was another tiny aftershock, as if to underscore the heaviness of Gellis' words.

In fact, Garys could no longer remember what he had said to Zayed, so what he just said was actually a re-editing of his words on the spot.

Garys is now thirty years old. He may be considered young in later generations, but in this era he is already a middle-aged man.

After more than ten years of experience, Gellis has made great progress in many areas. For example, he has become an expert at improvising certain words.

With these words, coupled with the miracle that Gailis had performed before, and even his own identity, naturally many of the caravan members present were stunned.

Since Gairis spoke in Arabic, some of the Turks understood him.

The one who understood was a young man, and the expression on his face was quite interesting when he realized who Garys was.

After all, Gairis's story had actually spread to the Anatolia region, and some well-informed people had heard of his deeds.

For this young man, this was the myth coming true, except that he was the one being beaten.

But in this way, he would not be the one who was embarrassed, but instead this would become an experience that he could brag about for the rest of his life.

In one's lifetime, not everyone can endure the beatings from a legendary person and still survive.

Even though Garys was his potential enemy, it couldn't stop him from having a strong liking for him.

Therefore, he was in a state of panic, wanting to get closer to Garys and listen carefully to the story told by this legend.

"When I made the prophecy, it was fourteen years ago, when I was still in Transjordan, but of course that is not important."

"The important thing is that the first half of the prophecy is now being fulfilled, and I want to reverse part of it, so I came to Anatolia, the land of the Romans."

Since this matter concerns the end of the Arab Golden Age, Yusuf naturally couldn't help but want to explore it more.

"The first half?"

"You mean to say that the cross from Rome will eat Rome? That the city that the world longs for will be torn apart?"

Yusuf was a little confused. He couldn't understand these words for a moment.

Instead, it was the young Turkic man who had been hiding for a distance who interrupted and answered his question.

"It is the Latins, the Latins from the Eternal City, who are now besieging the Roman capital, the city that the world longs for."

Garys glanced at the Turkic young man with a flattering look and smiled a little.

"Yes, fate once again fulfilled its promise in another form."

Gellis did change the fate of many people, just like a butterfly flapping its wings, causing huge winds and waves in the Levant.

But the Fourth Crusade still happened.

The original target of the Fourth Crusade was still Jerusalem.

This matter, of course, has a lot to do with Garys himself.

The story begins in 1190.

Not long after Eden led the German Crusaders to conquer Damascus and establish the Principality of Damascus in 1190, Lionheart led the British and French Crusaders to complete the conquest of Egypt the following year.

Saladin's brother Adil was unable to organize an effective resistance.

King Richard the Lionheart, who completed the conquest of Egypt, was crowned king in Alexandria, but he obviously had no intention of governing Egypt's overseas territory.

After hearing the news of his father Henry II's death in Europe, he went his own way and left Egypt alone with a small army and returned to the European continent.

A group of British and French Crusader nobles were left alone and confused in Egypt.

Egypt became a kingdom without a king. Various nobles quickly divided Egypt up and established a feudal state that was a nearly perfect template.

That is, the high-ranking nobles divided the land and enfeoffed the middle-ranking nobles, and the middle-ranking nobles in turn enfeoffed the lower-ranking nobles, with each level of enfeoffment and oppression.

The old Egyptian farmer from the lower class welcomes the King of Hell.

However, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, under the leadership of Gairis, not only completed the restoration of the country, but also successfully integrated the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch, which had previously obeyed orders but not declarations, and obtained Cyprus and Damascus as allies.

The population and economy have been greatly improved, coupled with the Jerusalem sect theology's focus on the grassroots.

Therefore, Jerusalem theology inevitably came to the fore and spread in all directions.

The old Egyptian farmer, who had been in dire straits for a long time, seemed to have seen a savior for a moment.

While Gairis's ideas were widely spread in Egypt, they were also accompanied by various anti-tax movements.

The Crusader Kingdom of Egypt was naturally uneasy, and after gaining a deeper understanding of the current official ideology of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, it began to split on the spot.

It is really too heretical. This level of heresy is even more hateful than Islam!

As a result, after about 1195, the theology of Gelis could no longer be concealed and came to the fore half passively and half actively.

You should know that in the areas where the Kingdom of Jerusalem reformed successfully, the church organization had systematically disappeared and was replaced by religious orders similar to Catholic orders.

When news of this incident reached Rome, both the College of Cardinals and Pope Celestine III were horrified.

In the most sacred place of the Christian world, a heresy broke out that wanted to abolish the church organization.

This is really hard to accept for a while, or it is enough to make people panic.

Unlike Islam's occupation of Jerusalem, Islam is at least unlikely to use Jerusalem's special status to radiate its influence on the Christian world.

If Islam occupies Jerusalem, it will promote the unity of the Christian world and make it more cohesive and centripetal.

If a group of heretics who want to abolish the church organization occupy Jerusalem, it will be a precursor to another split in Christianity!
After all, the Christian pilgrimage tradition meant that theological ideas in the Jerusalem region could quickly flow back to Europe along with the flow of pilgrims.

This is to dig up the roots of their Roman Universal Church!
The former Pope Celestine III, a 93-year-old long-lived man, suddenly heard the bad news from the Holy Land. He was furious and angry for a while, and was called by the Lord.

The successor Pope Innocent III called himself "Christ's Vicar" and believed that the position of Pope was actually "demigod", between man and God; below God and above man.

He even called himself "Melchizedek" at one point, a king with priestly status.

As His Majesty who reached the pinnacle of the authority and influence of the Holy See in the Middle Ages, he made launching a new round of crusades the primary goal in the papal bull he issued when he succeeded to the throne.

(End of this chapter)