Editing First Crusade (section)

===Persecution of Christians===
According to historian [[Jonathan Riley-Smith]] and [[Rodney Stark]], Muslim authorities in the Holy Land often enforced harsh rules "against any open expressions of the Christian faith":<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fQ1DnLPPXGIC|page=37-38 |title=The First Crusaders, 1095-1131 |isbn=978-0-521-64603-1 |last1=Riley-Smith |first1=Jonathan |date=1997 |publisher=Cambridge University Press }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wtI90AEACAAJ|title=A history of the crusades, volume 1: the first hundred years|date=1969 |page=78|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |isbn=978-0-299-06670-3 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.9783/9781512818642-012/html?lang=en|title=the pilgrimages to palestine before 1095|chapter=D. The Pilgrimages to Palestine before 1095 |date=11 November 2016 |pages=68–80 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |doi=10.9783/9781512818642-012 |isbn=978-1-5128-1864-2 |last1=Runciman |first1=Steven }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0E-_EAAAQBAJ|title=How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity|date=11 July 2023 |page=102|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-68451-622-3 }}</ref>
{{quote|In 1026 Richard of Saint-Vanne was stoned to death after he was seen saying Mass. Muslim officials also ignored the constant robberies and massacres of Christian pilgrims, such as an incident in 1064 in which Muslims ambushed four German bishops and a party of several thousand pilgrims as they entered the Holy Land, slaughtering two-thirds of them}}

The [[Persecution of Christians#Crusades|persecution of Christians]] became even worse after the Seljuk Turks invasion. Villages occupied by Turks along the route to Jerusalem began exacting tolls on Christian pilgrims. In principle, the Seljuks allowed pilgrims access to Jerusalem, but they often imposed huge tariffs and condoned local attacks. Many pilgrims were kidnapped and sold into slavery while others were tortured. Soon only large, well-armed groups would dare to attempt a pilgrimage, and even so, many died and many more turned back. The pilgrims that survived these extremely dangerous journeys, “returned to the West weary and impoverished, with a dreadful tale to tell.” News of these deadly attacks on pilgrims as well as the persecution of the native Eastern Christians caused anger in Europe.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IiwTAQAAIAAJ |title=A History of the Crusades |date=3 December 1987 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-34770-9 |page=1:79}}</ref>

News of these persecutions reached European Christians in the West in the few years after the [[Battle of Manzikert]]. A Frankish eyewitness says: "Far and wide they [Muslim Turks] ravaged cities and castles together with their settlements. Churches were razed down to the ground. Of the clergyman and monks whom they captured, some were slaughtered while others were with unspeakable wickedness given up, priests and all, to their dire dominion and nuns—alas for the sorrow of it!—were subjected to their lusts."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Frankopan |first1=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D-xIMAEACAAJ |title=The First Crusade: The Call from the East |publisher=Vintage |year=2013 |isbn=9780099555032 |pages=59–60}}</ref> It was in this climate that the Byzantine emperor [[Alexios I Komnenos]] wrote a letter to [[Robert II, Count of Flanders|Robert II of Flanders]] saying:
{{blockquote|The holy places are desecrated and destroyed in countless ways. Noble matrons and their daughters, robbed of everything, are violated one after another, like animals. Some [of their attackers] shamelessly place virgins in front of their own mothers and force them to sing wicked and obscene songs until they have finished having their ways with them... men of every age and description, boys, youths, old men, nobles, peasants and what is worse still and yet more distressing, clerics and monks and woe of unprecedented woes, even bishops are defiled with the sin of sodomy and it is now trumpeted abroad that one bishop has succumbed to this abominable sin.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Frankopan |first1=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D-xIMAEACAAJ |title=The First Crusade: The Call from the East |publisher=Vintage |year=2013 |isbn=9780099555032 |page=61}}</ref>}}

The emperor warned that if Constantinople fell to the Turks, not only would thousands more Christians be tortured, raped and murdered, but “the most holy relics of the Saviour,” gathered over the centuries, would be lost. “Therefore in the name of God... we implore you to bring this city all the faithful soldiers of Christ... in your coming you will find your reward in heaven, and if you do not come, God will condemn you.”<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_JUyPcvrYXUC |title=The Dream and the Tomb: A History of the Crusades |date=1984 |page=28-29|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8128-2945-7 }}</ref>