Templar - First Crusade
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The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the dual goals of reconquering the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land and freeing the Eastern Christians from Islamic rule. What started as an appeal by Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus for western mercenaries to fight the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia quickly turned into a wholescale Western migration and conquest of territory outside of Europe. Both knights and peasants from many nations of Western Europe travelled over land and by sea towards Jerusalem and captured the city in July 1099, establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and other Crusader states. Although these gains lasted for less than two hundred years, the First Crusade was part of the Christian response to the Islamic conquests, as well as the first major step towards reopening international trade in the West since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Background
The origins of the crusades in general, and of the First Crusade in particular, are varied and are widely debated among historians. They are most commonly linked to the political and social history of eleventh-century Europe, the rise of a reform movement within the Papacy, and the political and religious situation of Christianity and Islam in Europe and the Middle East.
Christianity, which had spread throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in the early Middle Ages, was by the early eighth century limited to Europe and Asia Minor after the rapid spread of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate had conquered Syria, Egypt, and North Africa from the predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire, and Spain from the Christian Visigothic Kingdom. In North Africa, the Ummayad empire eventually collapsed and a number of smaller Muslim kingdoms emerged, such as the Aghlabids, who entered Italy in the 9th century, and the Kalbids, who became prey to the Normans capturing Sicily by 1091. Pisa, Genoa, and Aragon began to battle other Muslim kingdoms for control of the Mediterranean, exemplified by the Mahdia campaign and battles at Majorca and Sardinia..
At the western edge of Europe, and of Islamic expansion, the Reconquista in Spain was well underway by the eleventh century; it was intermittently ideological, as evidenced by the Epitome Ovetense written at the behest of Alfonso III of Asturias in 881, but it was not a proto-crusade. Increasingly in the eleventh century foreign knights, mostly from France, visited Spain to assist the Christians in their efforts. Shortly before the First Crusade, Pope Urban II had encouraged Spanish Christians to reconquer Tarragona, near Barcelona, using much of the same symbolism and rhetoric that was later used to preach the crusade.
In the east was the Byzantine Empire, fellow Christians who had long followed a separate Orthodox rite. Since 1054 the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches had been in schism, and the imposition of Roman church authority in the east may have been one of the causes of the crusade. Under Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, the empire was largely confined to Europe and the western coast of Anatolia, and faced many enemies: the Normans in the west and the Seljuk Turks in the east. The Seljuks invaded Byzantium in 1071, and in response, in 1074, Pope Gregory VII called for the milites Christi ("soldiers of Christ") to go to their aid. This call, while largely ignored and even opposed, nevertheless focused a great deal of attention on the east.Umayyad Caliphate at its greatest extent.
The Seljuks and Byzantines continually fought for control of Anatolia and Syria. The Seljuks, who were orthodox Sunni Muslims, formerly ruled a large empire ("Great Seljuk") but by the time of the First Crusade it had divided into many smaller states after the death of Malik Shah I in 1092. Malik Shah was succeeded in the Anatolian Sultanate of Rüm by Kilij Arslan I, and in Syria by his brother Tutush I, who died in 1095. Tutush's sons Radwan and Duqaq inherited Aleppo and Damascus respectively, further dividing Syria amongst emirs antagonistic towards each other, as well as Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul.
Egypt and much of Palestine were controlled by the Arab Shi'ite Fatimids, whose empire was significantly smaller since the arrival of the Seljuks. Warfare between the Fatimids and Seljuks caused great disruption for the local Christians and for western pilgrims. The Fatimids, at this time ruled by caliph al-Musta'li, with the vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah holding actual power, had lost Jerusalem to the Seljuks in 1076, but recaptured it from the Ortoqids, a smaller Turkic tribe associated with the Seljuks, in 1098, just before the arrival of the crusaders.
The heart of western Europe itself had been relatively stabilized after the Christianization of the Saxons, Vikings, and Magyars by the end of the tenth century. However, the breakdown of the Carolingian Empire gave rise to an entire class of warriors who now had little to do but fight among themselves. The random violence of the knightly class, and often knighthood itself, were regularly condemned by the church, and the Peace of God was established to prohibit fighting on certain days of the year. At the same time, the reform-minded Papacy came into conflict with the secular world, resulting in the Investiture Controversy, and popes such as Gregory VII needed theological justification for the subsequent warfare. It became acceptable for the Pope to utilize knights in the name of Christendom, not only against political enemies of the Papacy, but also against Muslim Spain, or, theoretically, against the Seljuks in the east.
Historiography
All these events are claimed by historians to have contributed to the origin of the crusades. According to the "Erdmann thesis", developed by German historian Carl Erdmann, the origin was directly linked to the eleventh-century reform movements. Exportation of violence to the east, and assistance to the struggling Byzantine Empire were the primary goals, with Jerusalem a secondary, popular goal.
Generally, historians have either followed Erdmann, with further expansions upon his thesis; more recently, they have also considered the influence of the rise of Islam. According to Steven Runciman, there was no immediate threat from Islam, for "in the middle of the eleventh century the lot of the Christians in Palestine had seldom been so pleasant." The crusade was a combination of theological justification for holy war and a "general restlessness and taste for adventure", especially among the Normans and the "younger sons" of the French nobility who had no other opportunities. Thomas Asbridge argues that the crusade was simply Pope Urban II's attempt to expand the power of the church, and to reunite the churches of Rome and Constantinople, which had been in schism since 1054. The spread of Islam was unimportant, because "Islam and Christendom had coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity." Thomas Madden represents the opposite view; while the crusade was certainly linked to church reform and attempts to assert papal authority, it was most importantly a pious struggle, waged by faithful idealists, to liberate fellow Christians who "had suffered mightily at the hands of the Turks." This argument distinguishes the relatively recent violence and warfare that followed the arrival of the Turks from the general advance of Islam which is dismissed by Runciman and Asbridge. Christopher Tyerman incorporates both arguments; the crusade developed out of church reform and theories of holy war as much as it was a response to conflicts with Islam throughout Europe and the Middle East. For Jonathan Riley-Smith, poor harvests, overpopulation, and a pre-existing movement towards colonising the frontier areas of Europe also contributed to the crusade; he also notes, however, that "most commentators then and a minority of historians now have maintained that the chief motivation was a genuine idealism."
The idea that the crusades were a response to Islam dates back as far as twelfth-century historian William of Tyre, who began his chronicle with the fall of Jerusalem to Umar ibn al-Khattab. Although the original Islamic conquests took place centuries before the First Crusade, there were more recent events that European Christians still remembered. In 1009 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah; Pope Sergius IV supposedly called for a military expedition in response, and in France, many Jewish communities were even attacked in misplaced retaliation. Nevertheless, the Church was rebuilt after al-Hakim's death, and pilgrimages resumed, including the Great German Pilgrimage of 1064–1065, although those pilgrims also suffered attacks from local Muslims.
Chronological sequence of the Crusade Council of Clermont Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont. Illumination from the Livre des Passages d'Outre-mer, of c 1490 (Bibliothèque National)
Whatever the ultimate causes of the crusade, the most immediate factor was a request for assistance from Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus. Alexius was worried about the advances of the Turks, who had reached as far west as Nicaea, not far from Constantinople. In March of 1095, Alexius I sent envoys to the Council of Piacenza to ask Pope Urban II for aid against the Turks. Urban responded favourably, perhaps hoping to heal the Great Schism of forty years prior and re-unite the Church under papal primacy by helping the Eastern churches in their time of need.]
In July of 1095, Urban turned to his homeland of France to recruit men for the expedition. His travels there culminated in the Council of Clermont in November, where, according to the various speeches attributed to him, he gave an impassioned sermon to a large audience of French nobles and clergy, graphically detailing the fantastic atrocities being committed against pilgrims and eastern Christians. There are five versions of the speech written by people who may have been at the council (Baldric of Dol, Guibert of Nogent, Robert the Monk, and Fulcher of Chartres) or who went on crusade (Fulcher and the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum), as well as other versions found in later historians (such as William of Malmesbury and William of Tyre). All of these versions were written after Jerusalem had been captured, and it is difficult to know what was actually said and what was recreated in the aftermath of the successful crusade. The only contemporary records are a few letters written by Urban in 1095.
All the versions generally agree that Urban talked about the violence of European society and the necessity of maintaining the Peace of God; about helping the Greeks, who had asked for assistance; about the crimes being committed against Christians in the east; and about a new kind of war, an armed pilgrimage, and of rewards both on earth and in heaven, where remission of sins was offered to any who might die in the undertaking. They do not all specifically mention Jerusalem as the ultimate goal, but it seems clear from Urban's subsequent preaching that he intended the expedition to reach Jerusalem all along. The enthusiastic crowd responded with cries of Deus lo volt! ("God wills it!").
Recruitment Urban's speech had been well-planned; he had discussed the crusade with Adhemar, Bishop of Le Puy, and Raymond IV of Toulouse, and instantly the expedition had the support of two of southern France's most important leaders. Adhemar himself was present at the Council and was the first to "take the cross." For the rest of 1095 and into 1096, Urban spread the message throughout France, and urged his bishops and legates to preach in their own dioceses elsewhere in France, Germany, and Italy as well. However, it is clear that the response to the speech was much larger than even the Pope, let alone Alexius, expected. During his tour of France, Urban tried to forbid certain people (including women, monks, and the sick) from joining the crusade, but found this nearly impossible. In the end most who took up the call were not knights, but peasants who were not wealthy and had little in the way of fighting skills, in an outpouring of a new emotional and personal piety that was not easily harnessed by the ecclesiastical and lay aristocracy.Typically preaching would conclude with every volunteer taking a vow to complete a pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; they were also given a cross, usually sown onto their clothes.
As Thomas Asbridge writes, "Just as we can do nothing more than estimate the number of thousands who responded to the crusading ideal, so too, with the surviving evidence, we can gain only a limited insight into their motivation and intent." Previous generations of scholars argued that the crusaders were motivated by greed, hoping to find a better life away from the famines and warfare occurring in France, but as Asbridge says, "this image is...profoundly misleading."Greed is unlikely to have been a major factor because of the extremely high cost of travelling so far from home, and because almost all of the crusaders eventually returned home after completing their pilgrimage, rather than trying to carve out possessions for themselves in the Holy Land. . It is difficult or impossible to assess the motives of the thousands of poor for whom there is no historical record, and even for the knights, whose stories were usually told by monks or clerics. However, since the secular medieval world was so deeply ingrained with the spiritual world of the church, it is likely that personal piety was a major factor for many crusaders.
Despite this popular enthusiasm, however, Urban ensured that there would be an army of knights, drawn from the French aristocracy. Aside from Adhemar and Raymond, the leaders he recruited throughout 1096 were Bohemond of Taranto, a southern Italian ally of the reform popes; Bohemond's nephew Tancred; Godfrey of Bouillon, who had previously been an anti-reform ally of the Holy Roman Emperor; his brother Baldwin of Boulogne; Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the excommunicated King Philip I of France; Robert of Normandy, brother of King William II of England; and his relatives Stephen of Blois and Robert of Flanders. The crusaders represented northern and southern France, Germany, and southern Italy, and so they were divided into four separate armies which were not always cooperative, although they were held together by their common ultimate goal.
The motives of the nobility are somewhat clearer; greed was apparently not a major factor. It is commonly assumed, for example by Runciman as mentioned above, that only younger members of a family went on crusade, looking for wealth and adventure elsewhere, as they had no prospects for advancement at home. Riley-Smith has shown that this was not the case. The crusade was led by some of the most powerful nobles of France, who left everything behind, and it was often the case that entire families went on crusade, at their own great expense. For example, Robert of Normandy sold the Duchy of Normandy to his brother, and Godfrey sold or mortgaged his property to the church. According to Tancred's biographer, he was worried about the sinful nature of knightly warfare, and was excited to find a holy outlet for violence. Tancred and Bohemond, as well as Godfrey, Baldwin, and their older brother Eustace are examples of families who crusaded together. Riley-Smith argues that that enthusiasm for the crusade was perhaps based on family relations, as most of the French crusaders were distant relatives.
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