The Crusades and the Templars 75shown how such influence occurred well before the Crusades in the
Holy Land. In fact, the very first Crusade was the eleventh century
Crusade in Spain, the advance post of Christianity against the Muslim
world. This effort was the work of the Benedictines of Cluny. The
Crusades into Spain and the Middle East served to intensify and expand
the propagation in the West of Arab influences triggered two centuries
earlier by the initial contact between the two civilizations. These influ-
ences were especially attributable to the initiatory movements that
maintained the best and most long-lasting relations with the Crusaders:
those of the Karmates, Ismailians, Fatimids, Assassins, and Brothers of
Purity. It was perfectly natural that spiritual and social interpenetration
would be the outcome of the extensive relationship between the two
cultures.
It is this extensive Arab influence, twin to that of the Byzantine
world, that prompted the first cultural and philosophical renaissance
that took place in the West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
especially in France. Along with the rebirth of the studies of Roman
law, the royal role enjoyed by theology, which had ruled as sovereign
over the world of ideas and provided society with it principal leaders,
was strongly undermined. A new science was born that, rather than
being fundamentally opposite to its theological predecessor, was instead
independent of it. This was not the science of society such as the one
the Romans had let loose. Despite the official resistance of the Church,
this science was a synthesis, a joining: The great renown of the Roman
empire, like the wisdom of Greece or Egypt, had never vanished from
the memory of men. The Church was the direct heir to Rome and
retained its dominance in this new world. But now next to the theolo-
gian stood the jurist, the philosopher, and the scholar. This conjugation,
a return of authentic traditions, was the collective work of the Latins
(Europeans or their descendants living in the Latin States in the Holy
Land), the people of the East, and the Arabs.
We have seen a broad view of the role played by the Byzantine
world in the growth of culture in the West. It was the Arabs, though,
who reintroduced Aristotle in a form permeated with Neopythagorism
and Neoplatonism. It was also the Arabs who passed on the knowledge
of mathematics in general, particularly algebra and the works of Euclid.