eryone must have recognised the difference between what they
had anticipated and what they had found. They had seen undaunted
courage, chivalrous bearing, intellectual culture far higher than their
own. They had been in lands filled with prodigies of human skill. They
did not melt down into the populations to whom they returned without
imparting to them a profound impression destined to make itself felt in
the course of time."[180] Hitherto Mohammedan culture had only
influenced Christendom through the medium of the Spanish schools and
universities. Now the influence became more general. A taste for greater
comfort developed. Commerce grew; literature improved. We approach the
period of the Renaissance, and to that new birth the crusades, despite
their intolerance and brutality, offered a contribution of no small
value.

On the other hand, and for a time, the power of the Church grew greater.
The impetus given to superstitious hopes and fears made on all hands for
the wealth of the Church. Much was made over to the Church as a free
gift. Much was pawned to it. Much also was entrusted by those who went
to the Holy Land, never to return, in which case the Church became the
designated or undesignated heir. "In every way the all-absorbing Church
was still gathering in wealth, encircling new land within her hallowed
pale, the one steady merchant who in this vast traffic and sale of
personal and of landed property never made a losing venture, but went on
accumulating and still accumulating, and for the most part withdrawing
the largest portion of the land in every kingdom into a separate
estate, which claimed exemption from all burthens of the realm, until
the realm was compelled into measures, violent often and iniquitous in
their mode, but still inevitable."[181]

Next, the crusades set their seal upon the justice of religious wars,
and established an enduring alliance between militarism and religion.
The military profession became surrounded with all the ceremonies and
paraphernalia of religion, without being in the least humanised by the
alliance. The knight received his arms blessed by the Church, he was
sworn to defend the Church, and he was as ready to turn his weapons
against heretics in Europe as against infidels in Syria. Military
persecutions of heretics assumed the form of a mania. There were
crusades against the Moors in Spain, against the Albigenses, and against
other heretics. As Bryce remarks: "The religious