WI: Crusader States in the New World?

What if the Pope, after hearing some exaggerated tales from some Spanish about the wanton cruelties of the Mesoamerican pagans, authorized a crusade against the Amerindians?

Could we see the various conquistadors set up Crusader states like the Teutons did back in the day?
 
Seeing Spanish conquistadors set up their own mini-states isn't too hard; Cortes was suspected of it, and you had a few people like Gonzalo Pizarro who made halfway decent runs at it. The Crusade bit isn't needed. It's not like the Pope created the original Crusader states, he just told people to go liberate the Holy Land. Creating independent states afterwards (as opposed to returning them to the Byzantines or even creating a Papal enclave in the Levant) was something decided on by the Crusaders themselves.

As for non-Spaniards trying to Crusade? The Spanish were very restrictive on who they allowed into the New World for a host of reasons. Foreigners had great trouble getting in for any reason; foreign would-be Crusaders are obviously right out. A foreign power like England or France could certainly sponsor such an expedition (as indeed, they did at times), but that's going to turn into an English or French colony.
 
The idea of having new Crusades like those of the Middle Ages doesn't quite ring true. That whole idea seems to have been discredited long before. It's not too hard to imagine other ways that independent states could have arisen in the new world.

In fairness to the original thread concept, I should note that there was a tiny crusader outpost: the Knights of St. John (Malta) possessed a few Caribbean islands in the late 1600s.

Also, the Jesuits in Paraguay ran what was virtually an autonomous state in the 17th and 18th centuries.
 
The idea of having new Crusades like those of the Middle Ages doesn't quite ring true. That whole idea seems to have been discredited long before. It's not too hard to imagine other ways that independent states could have arisen in the new world

So what you're saying is, the PoD has to lie in the Middle Ages, and has to make the idea of crusades still alluring to an average European noble by the time America is discovered.
 
If the Vikings explored American much more, they could have eventually stumbled upon states in Mesoamerica. Just like the pagan Slavs of the eastern Baltic, a crusade could have been declared against these distant, gold-rich pagan states. Vinland might not have been common knowledge but gold would grab their attention.
 
If the Vikings explored American much more, they could have eventually stumbled upon states in Mesoamerica. Just like the pagan Slavs of the eastern Baltic, a crusade could have been declared against these distant, gold-rich pagan states. Vinland might not have been common knowledge but gold would grab their attention.

Why would they bother sailing 2500 miles to Mexico without any reason, let only with the meager amount of explorers there? They were content with Canada.

The Slavs weren't the target of the Crusades, most Baltic Pagans weren't Slavic. Those campaigns against Russia were romanticized by Swedish scholars in the 19th century as crusades.
 
The idea of having new Crusades like those of the Middle Ages doesn't quite ring true. That whole idea seems to have been discredited long before. It's not too hard to imagine other ways that independent states could have arisen in the new world.

In fairness to the original thread concept, I should note that there was a tiny crusader outpost: the Knights of St. John (Malta) possessed a few Caribbean islands in the late 1600s.

Also, the Jesuits in Paraguay ran what was virtually an autonomous state in the 17th and 18th centuries.

I disagree, I can't see this happening for a host of reasons but not because the idea of crusades in this period was somehow discredited. There was considerable talk of crusades in Columbus' day, they never happened but it was seriously considered. The Reconquista was something of a crusade after all, not to mention the Crusade of Varna about 50 years before.
 
One could say Spain was already a Crusader state- it conquered Andalusian Muslim states under the pretense of holy war and acquired land in the New World under the pretense of converting the natives.
 
I think this is more feasible if the Aztecs or Inca hold out for longer. They become known in Europe for cutting out Christian's hearts and having lots of gold, a perfect combination for encouraging a religious war.

That in turn provides the possibility of some of the smaller mesoamerican nations surviving if they converted to Christianity since they'd be a useful tool against the Aztec. Perhaps a religious order is placed in charge of one of them by Spain to both encourage their conversion and advance the war against the Aztec.
 
Why would they bother sailing 2500 miles to Mexico without any reason

Why did they sail past the Faroes? Past Iceland? Past Greenland? Get more Vikings to sail that way and odds are some of them would rather steal than perform any honest labor. It might take them a century, but they would stumble across a tribe with gold, then they will start to look seriously for more tribes with gold.
 
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