Founder of Constantinople, Constantine claims the great Byzantine Empire and in turn inherits the new Holy Roman Empire. With the Edict of Milan in 313, Constantine proclaimed religious tolerance toward Christians throughout the empire and soon the religion spread. Constantine then transformed the city of Byzantium into the new capital of the Roman Empire, then known and proclaimed Constantinople. The new capital would benefit from its location closer to the eastern border, thus enjoying better trade and a militarily strong situation, protected on three sides by water. The location of the new capital would undoubtedly later be a cause. worrying for the Papal States. As a result, in 1054, a great blow was received by the Christian Church. The pope asserted that Rome had religious primacy over Constantinople. The bishop of Constantine had a different opinion. The argument was based on the creation of a council within the papacy, an idea that did not please the pope. The struggle caused the Great Schism in 1054, where the Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church split. The split would then become an important cause of the Crusades. The end of the 11th century brought the Byzantine Empire new and growing threats from all sides. The most important of these were the Seljuk Turks who had begun to advance towards the very heart of the Byzantine Empire. Soon the Turks were on the verge of controlling Anatolia, the most prosperous city of the Byzantine Empire. Not far away, Jerusalem returned to Sunni control when the Turks managed to capture the Holy City. The Seljuk Turks continued to advance. Concerned by the Seljuk approach, Alexios Comnenus appealed to the Western European knight...... middle of paper...... one could even argue that this also provoked Atlantic powers such as Spain and Portugal seeks trade routes to India and China. Efforts that helped open most of the world to European commercial domination and colonization and shift the center of commercial activity from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the Crusades failed to end the division between the Church, but ultimately succeeded in strengthening the Roman Catholic Church and speeding up trade, which brought new economic and cultural wealth. Works Cited Bokenkotter, Thomas. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977. Print. Eberhard, Hans. The Crusades. 2nd. Oxford University Press, USA, 1988. Print. Coffin, Judith and Robert Stacey. Western civilizations: from prehistory to the present day. 2nd. New York, NY: WW Norton & Co Inc, 2008. Print.