crusades against Christian heretics. In the 13th century, crusading was used against the Cathars in Languedoc and against Bosnia; this practice continued against the Waldensians in Savoy and the Hussites in Bohemia in the 15thcentury and against Protestants in the 16th. From the mid-14thcentury, crusading rhetoric was used in response to the rise of the Ottoman Empire, and ended around 1699 with the War of the Holy League. Terminology In modern historiography, the term "crusade" first referred to military expeditions undertaken by European Christians in the 11th, 12th, and 13thcenturies 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 Roman Catholic Church against pagans, heretics or for alleged religious ends. These differed from other Christian religious wars in that they were considered a penitential exercise, and so earned participants forgiveness for all confessed sins. What constituted a "crusade" has been understood in diverse ways, particularly regarding the early Crusades, and the definition remains a matter of debate among contemporary historians. The meaning of a "crusade" is generally viewed in one of four ways. Traditionalists view Crusades as only those to the Holy Land from 1095–1291. Pluralists view Crusades are military expeditions that enjoyed papal endorsement, including those to the Holy Land before and after 1291, to Northern Europe and Iberia, and against Christians. Popularists focus on the popular groundswells of religious fervour. Generalists focus on the basic phenomenon of Latin holy wars. Most modern Crusades historians consider a combination of pluralism and popularism, which is also the focus of this article. At the time of the First Crusade, , "journey", and , "pilgrimage" were used for the campaign. Crusader terminology remained largely indistinguishable from that of Christian pilgrimage during the 12thcentury. A specific term for a crusader in the form of "one signed by the cross", however, emerged in the early 12th century. This led to the French the way of the cross. By the mid 13thcentury the cross became the major descriptor of the crusades with "the cross overseas"used for crusades in the eastern Mediterranean, and "the cross this side of the sea"for those in Europe. The use of , "crusade" in Middle English can be dated to c.1300, but the modern English "crusade" dates to the early 1700s. The Arabic word for struggle or contest, particularly one for the propagation of