Final answer:
The Christian Church becomes led almost exclusively by figures called papacy at the end of the crusades The crusading ideal widened to encompass fights against various enemies of the church, resulting in the decline of the crusades' original purpose and the regional consolidation of the papacy's power.
Step-by-step explanation:
- The Christian Church becomes led almost exclusively by figures called papacy at the end of the crusades. The influence and role of the papacy evolved over time. During the early Middle Ages, the popes in Rome were not widely acknowledged as the sovereigns of the Church outside Italy.
- It was only later that the papacy's authority was solidified and recognized more broadly. After the fall of Rome and the rise of the popes as not just spiritual leaders but also as rulers unto themselves, the papacy became a central institution in medieval Europe, overseeing a large multinational bureaucracy including cardinals and bishops.
- After the crusades, the notion of conducting holy wars to liberate Jerusalem broadened. The popes adapted the crusading ideal for fighting against a wide range of perceived enemies of the church, including non-Christians in the Baltic regions, heretics in France, and the pope's own adversaries within Italy.
- The later crusades, driven less by the goal of controlling the Holy Land and more by the ambition to establish power in Europe, signaled the decline of the crusading ideal and the rise of the papacy as a dominant force in Christian governance.