CRUSADES The Crusades were a group of military interventions of the western world that, on an ideological level, were justified with the necessity of recovering for Christianity those places that had seen the birth, the life and preaching of Christ. They certainly answered, therefore, to that religious sentiment which, as we have already seen, was penetrating to the deepest self the spirit of the man of the Middle Ages. They answered, at the same time, and just as strongly, to an ardent wish to fight, to find places and spaces for economical development that the demographic boom, beginning to make itself felt in those times, made impelling. They answered to the eagerness for adventure still stronger after centuries of immobility and, last but not least, the wish of spoils. The First Crusade ( 1095-1099 ) was, for the West, the most glorious and during which was obtained the liberation of Jerusalem and the French states of Syria were founded. The Second, which failed, departed in 1147; the Third in 1189 and was the most unitarian, It saw together the Germanic Emperor and the Kings of France and England, as well as the State-cities of Italy and the Pope. The last crusade, an instrument that was then "outdated" was in 1270. Other to the military and propagandistic aspects of the crusades, they permitted the semi-developed western society to find itself in fecond contact with commerce, the arts, science and the thinking of the Orient. The populations with which it came into contact represented a civilization which was further advanced than that existing in Europe at the same time and, from this, the West obtained great advantage. The colonies and ports founded by the French in Syria gave great impulse to trade between the two continents. The crusades brought to Venice, the true animator of that trade, the maximum of wealth and glory, allowing the Venetians to invade Europe with food-skifts unknown before and refined objects of luxury ( silk is the most well-known example ), as well as giving start to new crafts of imitation or importation from the East. At the same time these contacts caused the birth of new intellectual interests in the West and in particular in the Universities, where they were deeply influenced by both science and philosophy of the Orient. The fervent intellectual activity in the late Middle Ages would never have been born if Europe had remained closed inside itself as it was before the crusades.