Download PDF | Norman Housley - Fighting for the Cross_ Crusading to the Holy Land-Yale University Press (2008).
392 Pages
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are countless histories of the crusades to the Holy Land, but hardly any attempts have been made to describe what the practice of crusading meant for the men and women who engaged in it. This is astonishing because crusading generated a very large volume of eyewitness testimony. For generations the accounts that Geoffrey of Villehardouin and John of Joinville wrote about the Fourth and Seventh Crusades have been among the most widely read medieval texts.
They deserve their fame because they're exceptionally vivid and personal memoirs. But Villehardouin and Joinville are just the tip of the iceberg. Narratives, letters, poems, songs, sermons and treatises give us the means to reconstruct to a remarkable degree both the lived experience of crusading and the state of mind of participants. Wherever possible Ive allowed these sources to speak for themselves, using translations when they exist. The crusades have always been well served by translators and in recent years there's been a welcome growth in translations that are both accurate and accessible.
The surviving texts are complemented by an unusually large quantity of striking visual evidence, as the illustrations reproduced here should demonstrate. Diacritical marks in oriental place and personal names present a constant issue for historians of crusading and Ive cut the Gordian knot by using none. The people whose exploits and sufferings are described in this book all took the cross to fight for Jerusalem. Crusading was an extraordinarily diverse phenomenon and thousands took the cross to fight in areas of the medieval world that were far away from the Holy Land, against Muslims, pagans and heretics among others.
But for various reasons their experience of crusading was different from that of the crusaders who fought in the East, so Ive made no attempt to bring them into this book. Exceptionally, I have included some of the fighting in Iberia, because it took place when crusaders were travelling to the Holy Land. Ive also been selective in my use of the evidence left by the settlers and military orders based in the East, because their experience and outlook were likely to be different from those of visiting crusaders. I'm grateful to Yale University Press for commissioning this book, to Heather McCallum for much helpful advice on it, and to the Press's readers for their detailed comments.
The book is the fruit of three decades of reading, talking, teaching and writing about the crusades, and I can't begin to list the hundreds of colleagues and students who have shaped my thinking about the subject. To all of them I'm grateful. But I want to single out for special thanks the series of PhD students supervised by Jonathan Riley-Smith whose theses I examined: Cassandra Chideock, Michael Lower, Christoph Maier, William Purkis, Rebecca Rist, Caroline Smith and Susanna Throop. Some of their theses have been published, and I hope that the others will soon join them. Between them these historians have made a fundamental contribution to how we should view the ideas and practices of crusading to the Holy Land. They've certainly taught me more than I can say. Norman Housley University of Leicester
CRUSADING IN THE EAST, 1095-12911
Blessed are the warmakers — Urban II and the launching of the First Crusade In August 1095 men bringing in the harvest in the Rhone valley witnessed the spectacular sight of a papal entourage on the move. Pope Urban II had crossed the Alps from Italy to visit his native land. It was a momentous journey because medieval popes rarely travelled outside Italy. Urban's itinerary was extensive and his agenda was packed, including the investigation of the French king's adultery. Yet this tour of southern and central France is remembered today for a single sermon that Urban preached in the open air at Clermont in the Auvergne on 27 November 1095. His subject was the holy city of Jerusalem, which had been captured by the Muslims in 638 during the first wave of Islamic conquests.
The pope called on all Christians to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims in the name of God. In so doing Urban brought into being the First Crusade, which achieved his goal in July 1099. But he did much more than that. The Muslims counter-attacked and the difficulty of holding on to Jerusalem compelled Urban II's successors to preach further crusades over a period that lasted almost two centuries. For this reason Urban's exhortation to the Catholic faithful outside the walls of Clermont ranks among the most significant sermons ever preached. This includes the Sermon on the Mount, whose message of non-resistance to evil (Matthew 5: 38^44) Urban dramatically reshaped.
The pope's preaching at Clermont changed and in many cases destroyed the lives of countless thousands of people - men, women and children, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. Hence it's frustrating that we know so little for certain about what Urban II actually said. We don't possess the text that he used, if indeed he used one. What we have are several reconstructed versions. True, some are by eyewitnesses, but all were written up after the triumph of 1099. There's also the inexplicable fact that in the middle of winter the news of the pope's appeal rippled out from Clermont to the far corners of the Catholic world, so that several armies were able to assemble in the spring of 1096 and begin their march eastwards. Given the speed of these events it's tempting to argue that the thousands who responded to the pope's appeal to 'take the cross' must have been expecting his call to arms, or something like it.
It's highly likely that the pope was responding to a groundswell of popular anxiety about what was happening at Christianity's holiest shrines under Muslim occupation; there are even one or two indications that his summons of a big military effort to free Jerusalem was expected. As he made his way through southern France towards Clermont, Urban would have been able to gauge the mood of the faithful and he may even have started sketching out the format for a military expedition to the East that could achieve his aim. One of his predecessors, Gregory VII, had got this far in 1074. Urban's sermon at Clermont looks like a well-publicized attempt to test the waters, and judging by the letters that he wrote in the months that followed he was taken aback by the scale of the response that he either encountered at first hand or was told about. These letters show clearly that he was under a lot of pressure, trying to shape the crusade that was evolving, above all to address basic questions about who should take part in and preside over it.
Pilgrimage or war? The First Crusade's volatile character Urban Us problem wasn't just coping with the extraordinary scale of the response; almost certainly he himself wasn't sure of what he had created. His preaching was like a chemistry experiment that created an inherently unstable compound. He had called for an armed pilgrimage, and it's certain that most of those who went on the First Crusade saw themselves first and foremost as pilgrims to Jerusalem. They'd made vows to worship at Jerusalem's sacred shrines, and they were carrying out one of Christianity's most ancient and popular devotional practices, earning forgiveness of sins through the public demonstration of sorrow, or penitence. But the military task facing these pilgrims was novel and extraordinary.
The 'cross-bearers' (crucesignati) were marching to Palestine through the territory of the Byzantine empire, whose European lands extended from the Adriatic Sea to Constantinople. It's possible that the arrival of envoys sent by Constantinople's ruler Alexios I, appealing for western military help, triggered in Urban's mind the idea of launching the expedition. The crusaders could certainly rely on Alexios for friendly support and guidance. But most of the territory that Alexios's predecessors had ruled for centuries in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and northern Syria had recently been overrun by the Seljuq Turks, so hard fighting could be expected along the entire route leading from Constantinople to Jerusalem. Above all, the imposing Syrian fortress-city of Antioch would have to be recaptured from the Turks.
What made it possible even to contemplate such a challenging project was the emergence of leaders among those who took the cross. They had to sort this out for themselves. The first crusaders got nothing but rudimentary guidance from Urban and his court about how they should proceed, so they fell back on their own ideas to create armies that would be capable of achieving the task that the pope had set them. The first group of armies to depart depended on the leadership of charismatic individuals, men who called on their own religious conviction and force of character to keep control over their followers.
The charismatics were epitomized by Peter the Hermit, who'd been one of the crusade's most successful preachers. These armies were followed by groups that coalesced around important territorial rulers who'd taken the cross - above all Godfrey duke of Bouillon, Raymond count of Toulouse, Robert duke of Normandy and Robert count of Flanders. To a large extent it was these men, usually called 'princes', who gave Urban's programme the potential to succeed. He must have been mightily relieved that such an imposing group stepped forward. Equally important was the fact that many of western Europe's finest fighting men, the knights (mUttes), took the cross. This was the case in the armies led by the charismatics as well as those commanded by iheprincifes. The enthusiasm of the knights cant have been surprising given that their fighting skills and social obligations dragged them into constant warfare against other Christians. Churchmen never tired of warning them that shedding Christian blood would lead to an eternity of suffering. Urban II knew that these arms-bearers had a desperate desire to perform penance, and the armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem was preached as a guarantee of salvation. But two features of the response to his sermon almost certainly did worry him. The first was the popularity of his crusade among contemporaries who weren't fighting men, but had no intention of being left out.
They couldn't be excluded given the fact that the crusade was a pilgrimage, but they had much less value than knights as combatants. We'll see that this conundrum at the heart of crusading was never fully resolved. Urban's second concern was the way those who took the cross shaped his preaching to their own devotional needs. The Catholic faithful (the laity) didn't just embrace the idea that the pope launched into their world in November 1095, they customized it with their own values. Some of what they brought into it, such as an emphasis on the practice of vendetta, was repugnant to the Church. Other ideas, like their tendency to see Jesus Christ as a feudal lord and themselves as his vassals, obliged to recover his lost lands in Palestine, were more acceptable. In fact a lot of preachers found colourful analogies like these useful in getting their message across. Overall, a project created by pious intellectuals who were excited by the prospect of recovering Jerusalem, with the bonus of persuading violent men to do penance, was made more xenophobic and more muscular. With hindsight it's clear that this was essential to give the crusade the raw vitality to succeed in the face of almost unendurable suffering and setbacks. The pope came up with the concept but it was the laity that gave it life.
Alliance with Byzantium In 1096 the first of these setbacks occurred when the initial wave of armies, those led by the charismatics, were shattered by defeat and disintegration. Although far from rabbles, they were less well supplied, equipped and disciplined than the armies of the princes. Three groups failed even to survive their march through the Balkans: they ran into trouble with the authorities en route and were driven back. Those groups that did reach Anatolia were cut to pieces in their first encounters with the Turks. It's possible that lessons were learnt from this, though the sheer speed of events and the slowness of communication didn't give much time for reflection or discussion; for in autumn 1096, less than twelve months after Urban II's sermon, the armies led by the princes, a cluster of forces that numbered some tens of thousands of men and women, marched eastwards. Some made their way through central Europe and others through Italy, and they converged outside Constantinople around Christmas 1096.
This wasn't the assistance for which Alexios had appealed to Urban. Patiently the emperor worked out a series of agreements with individual princes. His primary goal was to safeguard his lands and subjects from violence at the hands of the crusaders as they marched through Anatolia; all being well, he might also use their armed strength to regain some of the territory that he'd lost to the Turks. Perhaps this could even include Antioch, which had only been lost to the Turks in 1085. Initially this cautious plan worked well for Alexios, winning him the city of Nicaea in June 1097. But the crusaders weren't interested in conducting a war of systematic reconquest on behalf of their Byzantine allies. They were marching towards Jerusalem, and the further southwards they got, the more exposed Alexios's lines of communication would be. So from Nicaea onwards co-operation with Alexios became tenuous. By the time the crusaders reached northern Syria they'd started to get fractious and disillusioned with the Byzantines. In other respects, however, things went well. The march through Anatolia was rapid and efficient and it included an important victory over the Turks at Dorylaeum on 1 July 1097. A large number of fortified towns were captured and Baldwin of Boulogne, Godfrey of Bouillon's brother, seized Edessa, establishing the first of the crusader principalities. In the letters that they wrote home the crusaders were jubilant and self-confident, at times almost light-headed.
Trial by fire: Antioch Then came the crusade's time of trial, the military operations conducted at and around Antioch in 1097-9. The siege of Antioch was the pivotal event in the First Crusade. In every sense, military, logistical, political and religious, it proved desperately demanding. It makes sense to regard it as the crucible in which armed pilgrimage was transformed into something new that we now call crusading. Urban II had regarded the military recovery of Jerusalem as such a grim and arduous prospect that it would earn the participants God's full forgiveness for all their sins. Theologically this was optimistic, even speculative. The purgative tribulations endured at Antioch mattered because they bore the pope out, and more importantly they impressed themselves on the minds of the crusaders themselves.
The cry that went up when Urban II finished speaking at Clermont, Deus lo volt ('God wants this'), was vindicated not just by military victory but also by the fact that victory followed prolonged physical, mental and emotional suffering. The crusaders had to experience their Good Friday as well as their Easter Day. The heart of the crusaders' dilemma at Antioch was military: the fortress was formidable, its garrison strong and ably commanded, and although Seljuq authority in the region was highly fragmented, the Turkish rulers of Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul all made separate attempts to relieve the besieged city. In the event Antioch was betrayed to the crusaders by one of its garrison's officers on 3 June 1098, in a deal that was brokered by a Norman prince called Bohemund of Taranto.
Just two days after taking the city the crusaders were themselves besieged in it by Kerbogha, the governor of Mosul. Bohemund again played the leading role in the battle of Antioch (28 June 1098) in which Kerboghas army was resoundingly defeated. Bohemund couldn't match his fellow princes in resources but his extraordinary skills coupled with his ambition enabled him to dominate this phase of the crusade. He'd set his sights on becoming the ruler of Antioch and he argued that his role in its betrayal entitled him to possession of the city and its territories. The other princes clung to the battered ideal of co-operation with the Byzantines, and the resulting stalemate lasted throughout the autumn and winter of 1098—9.
The march southwards simply couldn't be resumed until the issue of Antioch's future was resolved. The crusaders had already been weakened by two periods of starvation, the first during their siege of Antioch and the second in the weeks when they'd been bottled up in the city by Kerboghas army. Now they suffered a third period of starvation, which seems to have been the most severe of them all. Worst of all, the enemy now wasn't external but internal: the greed and bickering of their own leaders. Many despaired of a solution and the crusade came close to collapse.
'Wonderful in our eyes' — the capture of Jerusalem The catalyst for movement was a revolt by the poor pilgrims. They knew that Raymond of Toulouse was the prince who was most susceptible to Jerusalem's attraction, and in January 1099 they exerted enough pressure on Raymond to make him initiate a march to the holy city. Bohemund remained as ruler of Antioch but the other princes joined the army, which after a reasonably easy march got to Jerusalem in June. The crusaders had now left the lands held by the Turks and entered a zone that was under the control of Egypt, which was ruled by the Fatimid dynasty. There was every expectation that the Fatimids would despatch a relief army so the capture of Jerusalem was urgent.
With the completion of their task in sight the crusaders set about this with infectious enthusiasm. The city was stormed on 15 July 1099, an event that set the seal on the collective mood of triumphalism that had been gathering pace throughout the southwards march from Syria. Contemporaries celebrated Jerusalem's recovery as nothing less than the work of God (Ps. 118:23-4), the clearest possible indication that the crusade was indeed his will. There were key decisions that had to be made immediately about the future government of Jerusalem. A patriarch was chosen and Godfrey of Bouillon emerged from an obscure electoral process as Jerusalem's first secular ruler.
The crusaders then defeated the Fatimid army at the battle of Ascalon on 12 August 1099. An exodus of the survivors ensued, though there were painfully few of them: it's likely that about 80 per cent of those who'd set out three years earlier had perished. Urban II had died in July 1099 but his successor Paschal II passed the news of Jerusalem's capture to the whole of Catholic Europe. The resulting excitement contributed a good deal towards the preaching of another expedition whose participants set out for the East in 1100 with the goal of reinforcing the settlers. The Turks in Anatolia were now alert to the threat posed by crusaders and aware of their opponents' military shortcomings. They defeated the newcomers comprehensively in a series of engagements in 1101, so little assistance reached those who'd stayed behind in the Holy Land. Nonetheless, the capture of Tripoli in 1109 meant that a cluster of important cities were in Christian hands and these formed the nuclei for four states: the kingdom of Jerusalem, the principality of Antioch, and the counties of Tripoli and Edessa. The Latin East was born.
The gestation of the Second Crusade In most respects the states that the first crusaders founded in the East lived separate lives, quarrelling with each other just like states in Europe. But they also had shared interests as a group, and these made it certain that crusading would enjoy a long future. Circumstances forced their rulers to become adept at lobbying for help. All too few Christians could be persuaded to settle permanently in what they called outremer ('beyond the sea'). It's been estimated that the total number of knights owing military service to the Latin rulers of Palestine and Syria reached no more than 2,000. It followed that if these lands, and above all Jerusalem, were going to be defended against the Muslims, then their fellow Christians in the West would have to come out to the East to help them on a temporary basis. There was never any credible alternative to this military assistance taking the form of further crusading.
The need was established twenty years after Jerusalem's capture, when a brief period of Christian belligerence fizzled out, and was followed by a powerful Islamic counter-offensive. This stemmed not from Fatimid Egypt nor from the Seljuq heartland in Iraq but from a Turkish dynasty based at Mosul and Aleppo, whose first protagonist was the warlord Zengi. On Christmas Eve 1144 Zengi captured Edessa, which thus enjoyed the dubious honour of being both the first of the large cities to be captured by the Christians and the first to fall again into Muslim hands. The news of Edessas capture had some impact on popular feeling in the West, where its strategic importance was generally appreciated. In religious and cultural terms the time seemed right for the preaching of another great crusade. Contemporaries had grown up surrounded by reminders on stone, parchment and glass of what had been done by the first crusaders. Their zeal, sufferings and victories generated almost mythic admiration and they were regarded as 'the great generation' of their times.
This was the case above all in France, where the summary tide created for the First Crusade, 'God s deeds, acting through the French' (Gesta del per Francos), enshrined proto-nationalist pride. Pope Eugenius III issued the first significant crusading encyclical, a letter intended for reading aloud to all the faithful. Like all papal bulls the encyclical is known by its opening words, Quantumpraedecessores, a phrase that overtly references Eugenius s awareness of the challenging legacy that he'd inherited from Urban II. However, the Second Crusade got off to a false start. In the regions where the First Crusade had recruited most vigorously monarchy had been at a low ebb, so second-tier leadership by the princes had proved necessary.
Thanks largely to good luck this had worked reasonably well; crucially, it had survived the storm and stress over who would rule at Antioch and Jerusalem. But kingship had now revived and the French looked to their king, Louis VII, to take the lead. For this he needed the support of his barons and initially they were lukewarm. For very good reasons they were worried about the destabilizing effect of a great expedition to the East. It was only in the spring of 1146 that their concerns were swept aside as collective enthusiasm caught them in its grip, together with the rest of France and many other regions of Europe.
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