<P> Europe was immersed in power struggles on many different fronts . The Christian Church split along Latin Orthodox lines in 1054 after centuries of disagreement leading to a permanent division called the East--West Schism . Following the Gregorian Reform, an assertive, reformist papacy attempted to increase its power and influence over the laity . Beginning around 1075 and continuing during the First Crusade, the Investiture Controversy was a power struggle between Church and state in medieval Europe over whether the Catholic Church or the Holy Roman Empire held the right to appoint church officials and other clerics . Antipope Clement III was an alternative pope for most of this period, and Pope Urban spent much of his early pontificate in exile from Rome . The result was intense piety and an increased interest in religious affairs amongst the general population in Catholic Europe and religious propaganda by the Papacy advocating a just war to reclaim Palestine from the Muslims . Participation in a crusade was seen as a form of penance that could counterbalance sin . </P> <P> In 1095, at the Council of Piacenza, Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military aid from Pope Urban II, probably in the form of a small body of mercenary reinforcements he could direct and control . Alexios had restored the Empire's finances and authority, but he still faced a number of foreign enemies, particularly the migrating Turks who had colonised the sparsely populated areas of Anatolia . At the Council of Clermont later that year, Urban raised the issue again and preached for a Crusade . Many historians consider that Urban also hoped that aiding the Eastern Church would lead to its reunion with the Western under his leadership . </P> <P> Almost immediately Peter the Hermit led thousands of mostly poor Christians out of Europe in what became known as the People's Crusade . He claimed he had a letter from heaven instructing Christians to prepare for the imminent apocalypse by seizing Jerusalem The motivations of this Crusade included a "messianism of the poor" inspired by an expected mass ascension into heaven at Jerusalem . Germany witnessed the first incidents of major violent European antisemitism when these Crusaders massacred Jewish communities in what become known as the Rhineland massacres . In Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne the range of anti-Jewish activity was broad, extending from limited, spontaneous violence to full - scale military attacks . The Crusaders journeyed, despite advice from Alexios' to wait for the nobles, to Nicaea . Only 3000 survived an ambush by the Turks at the Civetot . </P> <P> Both Philip I of France and Emperor Henry IV were in conflict with Urban and declined to participate in the official crusade . However, members of the high aristocracy from France, western Germany, the Low countries, and Italy were drawn to the venture, commanding their own military contingents in loose, fluid arrangements based on bonds of lordship, family, ethnicity, and language . Foremost amongst these was the elder statesman, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse . He was rivalled by the relatively poor but martial Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred from the Norman community of southern Italy . They were joined by Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin I of Jerusalem in leading a loose conglomerate from Lorraine, Lotharingia, and Germany . These five princes were pivotal to the campaign that was also joined by a Northern French army led by Robert Curthose, Stephen, Count of Blois, and Robert II, Count of Flanders . The armies, which may have contained as many as 100,000 people, including non-combatants, travelled eastward by land to Byzantium where they were cautiously welcomed by the Emperor . Alexios persuaded many of the princes to pledge allegiance to him and that their first objective should be Nicaea, which Kilij Arslan I had declared the capital of the Sultanate of Rum . Having already destroyed the earlier People's Crusade, the over-confident Sultan left the city to resolve a territorial dispute, enabling its capture in 1097 after a Crusader siege and a Byzantine naval assault . This marked a high point in Latin and Greek co-operation and also the start of Crusader attempts to take advantage of political and religious disunity in the Muslim world: Crusader envoys were sent to Egypt seeking an alliance . </P>

Who was most likely not involved in the crusades