Download our special issue on the history of the Crusades. The emergence of this interpretation energised the existing field and had the effect of drawing in a far greater number of scholars. Bush's disastrous use of the word 'crusade' to describe the 'war on terror' fed the extremists' message of hate and the notion of a longer, wider conflict between Islam and the West, dating back to the medieval period, became extremely prominent.
In reality, of course, such a simplistic view is deeply flawed but it is a powerful shorthand for extremists of all persuasions from Osama Bin Laden to Anders Breivik to ISIS and certainly provided an impetus to study the legacy of the crusading age into the modern world, as we will see here, calling on the extensive online archive of History Today.
The pope made a proposal: 'Whoever for devotion alone, but not to gain honour or money, goes to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God can substitute this journey for all penance. For several decades Christians had been pushing back at Muslim lands on the edge of Europe, in the Iberian peninsula, for example, as well as in Sicily. In some instances the Church had become involved in these events through the offer of limited spiritual rewards for participants.
Urban was responsible for the spiritual well-being of his flock and the crusade presented an opportunity for the sinful knights of western Europe to cease their endless in-fighting and exploitation of the weak lay people and churchmen alike and to make good their violent lives. Urban saw the campaign as a chance for knights to direct their energies towards what was seen as a spiritually meritorious act, namely the recovery of the holy city of Jerusalem from Islam the Muslims had taken Jerusalem in In return for this they would, in effect, be forgiven those sins they had confessed.
This, in turn, would save them from the prospect of eternal damnation in the fires of Hell, a fate repeatedly emphasised by the Church as the consequence of a sinful life. To find out more see Marcus Bull , who reveals the religious context of the campaign in his article.
Within an age of such intense religiosity the city of Jerusalem, as the place where Christ lived, walked and died, held a central role. When the aim of liberating Jerusalem was coupled to lurid probably exaggerated stories of the maltreatment of both the Levant's native Christians and western pilgrims, the desire for vengeance, along with the opportunity for spiritual advancement, formed a hugely potent combination.
Urban would be looking after his flock and improving the spiritual condition of western Europe, too. The fact that the papacy was engaged in a mighty struggle with the German emperor, Henry IV the Investiture Controversy , and that calling the crusade would enhance the pope's standing was an opportunity too good for Urban to miss.
A spark to this dry tinder came from another Christian force: the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines were Greek Orthodox Christians but, since , had been in a state of schism with the Catholic Church.
The launch of the crusade presented Urban with a chance to move closer to the Orthodox and to heal the rift. The reaction to Urban's appeal was astounding and news of the expedition rippled across much of the Latin West. Thousands saw this as a new way to attain salvation and to avoid the consequences of their sinful lives. Yet aspirations of honour, adventure, financial gain and, for a very small number, land in the event, most of the First Crusaders returned home after the expedition ended may well have figured, too.
While churchmen frowned upon worldly motives because they believed that such sinful aims would incur God's displeasure, many laymen had little difficulty in accommodating these alongside their religiosity.
Thus Stephen of Blois, one of the senior men on the campaign, could write home to his wife, Adela of Blois daughter of William the Conqueror , that he had been given valuable gifts and honours by the emperor and that he now had twice as much gold, silver and other riches as when he left the West. People of all social ranks except kings joined the First Crusade, although an initial rush of ill-disciplined zealots sparked an horrific outbreak of antisemitism, especially in the Rhineland, as they sought to finance their expedition by taking Jewish money and to attack a group perceived as the enemies of Christ in their own lands.
These contingents, known as the 'Peoples' Crusade', caused real problems outside Constantinople, before Alexios ushered them over the Bosporus and into Asia Minor, where the Seljuk Turks destroyed them. Led by a series of senior nobles, the main armies gathered in Constantinople during Alexios had not expected such a huge number of westerners to appear on his doorstep but saw the chance to recover land lost to the Turks.
Given the crusaders' need for food and transport, the emperor held the upper hand in this relationship, although this is not to say that he was anything other than cautious in dealing with the new arrivals, particularly in the aftermath of the trouble caused by the Peoples' Crusade and the fact that the main armies included a large Norman Sicilian contingent, a group who had invaded Byzantine lands as recently as See Peter Frankopan.
Most of the crusade leaders swore oaths to Alexios, promising to hand over to him lands formerly held by the Byzantines in return for supplies, guides and luxury gifts. In June the crusaders and the Greeks took one of the emperor's key objectives, the formidable walled city of Nicaea, miles from Constantinople, although in the aftermath of the victory some writers reported Frankish discontent at the division of booty.
The crusaders moved inland, heading across the Anatolian plain. A large Turkish army attacked the troops of Bohemond of Taranto near Dorylaeum. The crusaders were marching in separate contingents and this, plus the unfamiliar tactics of swift attacks by mounted horse archers, almost saw them defeated until the arrival of forces under Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon saved the day.
This hard-won victory proved an invaluable lesson for the Christians and, as the expedition went on, the military cohesion of the crusader army grew and grew, making them an ever more effective force.
Over the next few months the army, under Count Baldwin of Boulogne, crossed Asia Minor with some contingents taking the Cilician towns of Tarsus and Mamistra and others, heading via Cappadocia towards the eastern Christian lands of Edessa biblical Rohais , where the largely Armenian population welcomed the crusaders. Local political conflict meant Baldwin was able to take power himself and thus, in , the first so-called Crusader State, the County of Edessa, came into being.
By this time the bulk of the army had reached Antioch, today just inside the southern Turkish border with Syria. This huge city had been a Roman settlement; to Christians it was significant as the place where saints Peter and Paul had lived and it was one of the five patriarchal seats of the Christian Church.
It was also important to the Byzantines, having been a major city in their empire as recently as The site was too big to surround properly but the crusaders did their best to squeeze the place into submission.
Over the winter of conditions became extremely harsh, although the arrival of a Genoese fleet in the spring of provided some useful support. The stalemate was only ended when Bohemond persuaded a local Christian to betray one of the towers and on June 3rd, the crusaders broke into the city and captured it.
Their victory was not complete, however, because the citadel, towering over the site, remained in Muslim hands, a problem compounded by the news that a large Muslim relief army was approaching from Mosul.
Lack of food and the loss of most of their horses essential for the knights, of course meant that morale was at rock bottom. Count Stephen of Blois, one of the most senior figures on the crusade, along with a few other men, had recently deserted, believing the expedition doomed. They met Emperor Alexios, who was bringing long-awaited reinforcements, and told him that the crusade was a hopeless cause.
Thus, in good faith, the Greek ruler turned back. In Antioch, meanwhile, the crusaders had been inspired by the 'discovery' of a relic of the Holy Lance, the spear that had pierced Christ's side as he was on the cross.
A vision told a cleric in Raymond of St Gilles' army where to dig and, sure enough, there the object was found. A couple of weeks later, on June 28th, , the crusaders gathered their last few hundred horses together, drew themselves into their now familiar battle lines and charged the Muslim forces. With writers reporting the aid of warrior saints in the sky, the crusaders triumphed and the citadel duly surrendered leaving them in full control of Antioch before the Muslim relief army arrived.
The senior crusaders were bitterly divided. Bohemond wanted to stay and consolidate his hold on Antioch, arguing that since Alexios had not fulfilled his side of the bargain then his oath to the Greeks was void and the conquest remained his. The bulk of the crusaders scorned this political squabbling because they wanted to reach Christ's tomb in Jerusalem and they compelled the army to head southwards.
En route, they avoided major set-piece confrontations by making deals with individual towns and cities and they reached Jerusalem in June John France relates the capture of the city in his article from Forces concentrated to the north and the south of the walled city and on July 15th, the troops of Godfrey of Bouillon managed to bring their siege towers close enough to the walls to get across.
Their fellow Christians burst into the city and over the next few days the place was put to the sword in an outburst of religious cleansing and a release of tension after years on the march.
A terrible massacre saw many of the Muslim and Jewish defenders of the city slaughtered, although the oft-repeated phrase of 'wading up to their knees in blood' is an exaggeration, being a line from the apocalyptic Book of Revelation used to convey an impression of the scene rather than a real description — a physical impossibility. The crusaders gave emotional thanks for their success as they reached their goal, the tomb of Christ in the Holy Sepulchre. Their victory was not yet assured.
The vizier of Egypt had viewed the crusaders' advance with a mixture of emotions. As the guardian of the Shi'ite caliphate in Cairo he had a profound dislike of the Sunni Muslims of Syria, but equally he did not want a new power to establish itself in the region. His forces confronted the crusaders near Ascalon in August and, in spite of their numerical inferiority, the Christians triumphed and also secured a substantial amount of booty.
By this time, having achieved their aims, the vast majority of the exhausted crusaders were only too keen to return to their homes and families. Some, of course, chose to remain in the Levant, resolved to guard Christ's patrimony and to set up lordships and holdings for themselves. Fulcher of Chartres, a contemporary in the Levant, lamented that only knights stayed in the kingdom of Jerusalem; a tiny number to establish a permanent hold on the land.
Over the next decade, however, aided by the lack of real opposition from the local Muslims and boosted by the arrival of a series of fleets from the West, the Christians began to take control of the whole coastline and to create a series of viable states. The support of the Italian trading cities of Venice, Pisa and, particularly at this early stage, Genoa, was crucial. The motives of the Italians have often been questioned but there is convincing evidence to show they were just as keen as any other contemporaries to capture Jerusalem, yet as trading centres they were determined to advance the cause of their home city, too.
The writings of Caffaro of Genoa, a rare secular source from this period, show little difficulty in assimilating these motives. He went on pilgrimage to the River Jordan, attended Easter ceremonies in the Holy Sepulchre and celebrated the acquisition of riches.
Italian sailors and troops helped capture the vital coastal ports such as Acre, Caesarea and Jaffa , in return for which they were awarded generous trading privileges which, in turn, gave a vital boost to the economy as the Italians transported goods from the Muslim interior especially spices back to the West.
Just as important was their role in bringing pilgrims to and from the Holy Land. Now that the holy places were in Christian hands, many thousands of westerners could visit the sites and, as they came under Latin control, religious communities flourished.
The instinct to combine profit with piety predated crusading, and when the church decided to institutionalise war on non-Christians, it survived intact. Of course, not all crusaders got rich. Many who joined the First Crusade were maimed, killed or bankrupted themselves due to the expense of the journey.
Yet there were a significant number of others who did very well out of the enterprise. When the first crusaders entered Jerusalem in July and put the city to the sword, one of the Norman leaders, Tancred of Hauteville, sent his personal bodyguards to the Haram al-Sharif Temple Mount , where they spent two days relieving the shrine of the Dome of the Rock known by the crusaders as the Temple of the Lord of its most precious ornaments.
The crusaders in put that firmly out of their minds. From this point on, the possibility of financial reward remained one of several strong motivators for crusaders.
In —11 the first king to travel from Europe on crusade was Sigurd I of Norway. When Sigurd left the Holy Land, his ships were laden with so much treasure that they displayed it on their masts and sails, where it caught the light to dazzling effect. Many more followed suit.
In the aftermath of , four crusader states were established along the Palestinian and Syrian coast: the kingdom of Jerusalem, the counties of Edessa and Tripoli and the principality of Antioch.
They offered estates to be farmed, villages to be taxed, port cities to be developed and merchant routes connecting the Mediterranean world with the faraway markets of India and China. Very quickl. They made a beeline to the east to carve out their own roles in this exciting new world, establishing lordships, bishoprics and trading stations. Prominent in this were the three great trading cities of northern Italy: Genoa, Pisa and Venice.
All three possessed significant naval power, which they could lend to crusader campaigns to conquer or defend coastal cities in the east, such as Acre, Tyre and Beirut.
They were keen to establish their reputations as prominent members of the Christian world. And they each knew that if they engaged with crusading, they would be rewarded not only with the forgiveness of sins promised by successive popes, but also in economic terms.
Few episodes illustrate this more effectively than the siege of Tyre — a stoutly defended city in modern Lebanon — which took place in More than Venetian ships, commanded by the doge [duke] of Venice, Domenico Michiel, sailed to the east to take part in the siege. Tyre would remain in Christian hands for more than years, and during that time the republic of Venice profited handsomely.
This was by no means unique. In every major city up and down the coast, Italian merchant colonies were a familiar sight, their willingness to pour investment into the crusading cause amply and visibly rewarded.
The most notorious example of this, perhaps, occurred in the Fourth Crusade of —04 and once again involved the republic of Venice. The citizens of Venice agreed to build — at great cost — a massive fleet to transport the armies of the Fourth Crusade to Egypt, where they planned to conquer the wealthy city of Alexandria.
In the end, however, the crusading fleet diverted to the Christian cities of Zara modern Zadar and Constantinople. Urban was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
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