the Arab’s practical needs. It appealed strongly to a huge element within the Christian community. The first big Islamic victory, at the River Yarmuk in 636, was achie ved because 12,000 Christian Arabs went over to the enemy. The Christian Monophysites ~ Copts, Jacobites and so forth ~ nearly always preferred Moslems to Catholics. Five centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Jacob ite Patriarch of Antioch, Michael the oyrian, faithfully produced the tradition of his people when he wrote: 'The God of Vengeance, who alone is the Almighty. . . raised from the south the children of Ishmael to deliver us by them from the hands of the Romans.’ And at the time a Nestorian chronicler wrote: ‘The hearts of the Christians rejoiced at the domination of the Arabs - may God strengthen it and prosper it.' The Monophysite Moslems and the Monophysite Christians never fused theologically. But, unlike the Jews. they did not remain racially and culturally distinct. The religious pattern froze: the Arab Moslems tolera ted all Children of the Book, but would not allow their rivals to expand. Christians were in the majority only in Alexandria and certain Syrian cities. Generally, they preferred Arab-Moslem to Greek-Christian rule, though there were periods of difficulty and persecution. There was never, at any stage, a mass-demand from the Christians under Moslem rule to be ‘liberated’, Three factors combined together to produce the militant crusades. The first was the devel opment of small-scale ‘holy wars' against Moslems in the Spanish theatre. In 1063, Ramiro |, King of Aragon, was murdered by a Moslem; and Alexander || promised an indulgence for all who fought for the cross to reven ge the atrocity; the idea was developed in 1073 by Gregory VII who helped an international army to assemble for Spanish campaigning, guaranteeing canonically that any Christian knight could keep the lands he conquered, provided he acknowledged that the Spanish kingdom belonged to the see of St Peter. Papal expansionism, linked to the colonial appetite for acquiring land, thus supplied strong political and economic motives. There was, secondly, a Frankish tradition, dating from around 800, that the Carolingian monarchs had a right and a duty to protect the Holy Places in Jerusalem, and the western pilgrims who went there. This was acknowledged by the Moslem caliphs, who until the late eleventh century preferred Frankish interference to what they regarded as the far more dangerous penetration by Byzantium. From the tenth century, western pilgrimages grew in frequency and size. They were highly organized by the Cluniac monks, who built abbeys to provide hospitality on the way. There were three well-marked land-routes through the Balkans and Asia, as well as the more expensive sea-route; and elaborate hospices in Jerusalem itself. Powerful lords were allowed by the Moslems to bring armed escorts; other pilgrims joined them: so western Christians moved in large, armed contingents - in 1064-6, for instance, 7,000 Germans, many armed, travelled together to Jerusalem. There was not all that much physical difference between a big pilgrimage and a crusade. What really created the crusade, however, was the almost unconscious decision, at the end of the eleventh century, to marry the Spanish idea of conquering land from the infidel with the practice of the mass, armed pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And this sprang from the third factor - the vast increase in western population in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequent land hunger. Cistercian pioneerfarming at the frontiers was one solution. Crusading was another - the first great wave of the European colonial migrations. It was, in fact, deeply rooted in Christian cosmology. The Ptolemaic conception of a circumambient ocean had been accepted by the Fathers and reconciled with the bible in Isadora’s encyclopedia. The three continents were allocated to the sons of Noah after the Flood - Shem stood for the Jews, Japhet for the Gentiles, and Ham for the Africans, or blacks. Alcuin's commentary on Genesis reads: “How was the world divided by the sons and grandsons of Noah?" "Shem is considered to have acquired Asia, Ham Africa and Japhet Europe." The passage then went on to prove from the scriptures that JaphetEurope was by its name and nature divinely appointed to be expansionist. Within a generation of Alcuin, early in the ninth century, we first hear of ‘Christendom’, an entity judged to be co-extensive with Europe, but with special privileges and rights, including the right to expand. Phrases like the ‘defense of Christendo m’ 76