But the relation of East and West during the Crusades was not merely hostile or negative.
But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine the modern history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain people.
As such a novum salutis genus, the Crusades connect themselves with the history of the penitentiary system; as the foreign policy of the Church they belong to that clerical purification and direction of feudal society and its instincts, which appears in the institution of "God's Truce" and in chivalry itself.
As chivalry directed the layman to defend what was right, so the preaching of the Crusades directed him to attack what was wrong - the possession by "infidels" of the Sepulchre of Christ.
The Crusades are the offensive side of chivalry: chivalry is their parent - as it is also their child.
