1° Impose theocratic supremacy on temporal order; the subsequent Crusades would reinforce the pre-eminence of Papal dictat on royalty.
2° Ensure that the Episcopal bishops appointed by Pope would enrich the local church and the papal office through direct taxation of the christian fold. The use by the Templar militia of the Trust foundation to increase donations to their Order at demise of rich feudals was an additional source that aided the Crusader cause.
It would provoke increasing resistance from the feudal order, especially after the failed Second Crusade in 1148, where Conrad III lost his army and his successor Frederick I lost his life in the following Third Crusade.
Frederick Barbarossa had defied Pope Alexander III during the battle of Legnano against the Lombard League, faithful to Papal cause. His defeat and subsequent reconciliation with Pope, did not solve their mutual defiance. It would result in the civil war over two hundred years, between the Imperial clan, Ghibelline, and the Papal clan, Guelf, that would divide the feudal order of Italy.
After the failures of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Crusades, the new, young Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, a Sicilian by birth, son of Queen Constance, Norman princess, decided that the Crusader adventure was a sterile tradition. Married to Princess of Jerusalem he negotiated, during the so-called Sixth Crusade, with Ayyubid king Kamel the acquisition of Jerusalem through a peaceful treaty. Jerusalem returned to Christian rule for eight years, then was taken back by the Muslims according to the treaty rules, imposed against the resistance local Frankish Baronial Orders by bloody recapture.
The evident subsequent lack of desire of Emperor to take the sword and reconquer Jerusalem, further heightened animosity between incumbent Pope Innocent IV and Frederick II. It led to bloody civil war and final defeat of Emperor, who lost his pre-eminence in Italy, opening the door to rising ambitions of King Louis IX of France, who took the head of the Seventh Crusade in Emperor's place.
The ensuing military campaign, hubristically described by Saint Louis in his letter to Ayyubid Sultan as-Sahil as his desire to "come search the Infidel to kill him there in his most precious spot on earth", resulted in the loss of whole Crusader army by King Louis at battle of Mansourah in 1250. It would allow the Mamluk slave dynasty to take power. Redoubtable mounted cavalry their armies would not only chase the Franks from Holy Land but destroy the Mongol advance into Syria at Ain Jalut in 1260.
During the whole Crusader period the city Republics of Venice, Pisa and Genoa would greatly enrich their domains as naval powers; from the commerce of arms, silk and spices with Muslim lands. It would create a commercial dynamism in Italy that would make it premier region of material wealth in Europe. Venice would invent the monetary system after its capture of Constantinople in 1204. Florence would dominate the arts, and its banks would finance the emergence of an artisanal industry that made Tuscany the garden of Italy, supplanting Sicily and Constantinople as the richest city-republic in West, along with Venice.
The ensuing situation of Italy would be further complicated by presence of the French kingdom of Naples and Sicily. For two hundred years Italy would be torn in a tripartite dispute between Papal, Imperial and French interests. The advent of Spanish monarch Charles V of Hapsburg descent to imperial throne would result not only with the eviction of French troops from Italy but also the enfeeblement of Papal office, in the context of the Renaissance flowering and the Reform movement. The fall of the Borgia and Medici Popes would close the chapter of Italian Renaissance. In this convoluted period of change when feudal power and Papal rule ceded its hold to the commercial strain of nascent capitalism and the emergence of nation-state ideology, the fight for the money line, now recognised as giving control of the regional political construct, as to the resultant war effort as a means to an end, would be highlighted by Venice's power play to dominate the monetary game and monopolise the precious metals supply. Europe traditionally had silver but no gold mines, which came from Africa or India. It had been an ongoing quest since Roman days : accessing gold as well, iconised measure of all wealth; like silk, spices and precious stones as secondary sources.
The Habsburg Empire would launch the great adventure of maritime discoveries and of mercantile hegemony, which would first be won by the Dutch, then finally by England at the expense of all other nation states. The Caravels and Gallions of the Conquistadors and Sea Rovers of Spanish Main would change the world by circumventing its remotest regions, opening the world to commerce like never before since Marco Polo but on a much grander scale. The age of commercial capitalism was born on the money line of the Fuggers and the money changers of Antwerp.
The cultural heritage of the Renaissance would best be epitomised by the close relationship between François I of France and his cultural mentor, Leonardo da Vinci. The Universal master's influence on French culture would be such that it changed the architectural face of France; with its influence on the Chateaux constructions of the Loire valley and of the Louvre in Paris. Just as Michael Angelo had revolutionised the Sistine chapel of Rome; Raphael, Botticelli and Brunelleschi the art of Florence; Titian and Tintoretto that of Venice.
The final nail in the decline of Papal influence and the resultant transfer of political domination from the Mediterranean region to the northern regions of Europe, around Antwerp and German cities, would be the triumph of Martin Luther's reform. His defiance of the Church and Pope denouncing the Indulgences, by nailing his 95 articles of faith on the walls of the Wittenberg chapel in 1517, would announce profound changes on European continent, both spiritual and political; of which the most outspoken secular son would be Erasmus. The age of Protestant Northern Europe would forge the new mindset of capitalism relayed by that marvel of new technology the Gutenberg press. The emergence of precious metal based reserve banking, and virtual credit systems, outside the control of universal, religiously controlled social networks, challenged the decaying face of the past age of European feudal-papal hegemony. It launched the reformist inspired capitalist construct across the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean into the colonial heartland of the mercantile age of the New Indies; mythical Atlantis resuscitated.
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