section_path: Terminology
section_name: Terminology
paragraph_text: Terminology
  
  The term "crusade" first referred to military expeditions undertaken by European Christians in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to the Holy Land. The conflicts to which the term is applied has been extended to include other campaigns initiated, supported and sometimes directed by the Latin Church with varying objectives, mostly religious, sometimes political. These differed from previous Christian religious wars in that they were considered a penitential exercise, and so earned participants remittance from penalties for all confessed sins. What constituted a crusade has been understood in diverse ways, particularly regarding the early Crusades, and the precise definition remains a matter of debate among contemporary historians.
  
  At the time of the First Crusade, iter, "journey", and peregrinatio, "pilgrimage" were used for the campaign. Crusader terminology remained largely indistinguishable from that of Christian pilgrimage during the 12th century. A specific term for a crusader in the form of crucesignatus — "one signed by the cross" — emerged in the early 12th century. This led to the French term croisade — the way of the cross. By the mid 13th century the cross became the major descriptor of the crusades with crux transmarina — "the cross overseas" — used for crusades in the eastern Mediterranean, and crux cismarina — "the cross this side of the sea" — for those in Europe. The use of croiserie, "crusade" in Middle English can be dated to c. 1300, but the modern English "crusade" dates to the early 1700s. The Crusader states of Syria and Palestine were known as the " Outremer " from the French outre-mer, or "the land beyond the sea".