The author analyzes various aspects of the Crusades movement in the medieval Europe of the eleventh-thirteenth centuries. She shapes an idea that the reasons of that religious movement were not limited with economical interests in broadening markets at the Near East, but included religious longings of its participants. On her opinion, the Crusades were mainly due to those religious factors. She stresses that the loss of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was interpreted exactly as a spiritual catastrophe; and from the economical point of view that event had no serious aftermath, because the trade was soon renewed, and the Christian merchants’ districts of the city were almost untouched – it allowed to reactivate the trade routes quite fast.
The author put a special attention at such important aspect of the Moslem and Christian interaction, as their certain rapprochement through the studying of the classic heritage by Europeans by the agency of Arabic manuscripts. She mentioned an example of Friedrich II Hohenstaufen who did not support the implacable position of Pope Gregory IX; D.-R. argued that it was a result of his education organized partly by Sicilian Arabs. She noted that the dusk of the Crusades movement was connected with a number of changes both in Christian Europe, and in the Moslem world. On her opinion, the very idea of the Crusade was depreciated – and it covered not only campaigns at the Near East, but also those to the Baltic lands, and against heretics.