Download The Social Structure of the First Crusade Conor Kostick Arachne ID

The Social Structure of the First Crusade
Conor Kostick
Arachne ID: 27619
In 1096, tens of thousands of people of all backgrounds left their homes in Europe to march to Jerusalem
and capture it for Christianity. Among them were many thousands of knights. These professional warriors
lived for the chase; if they were not at war they were at the hunt and the horse that they rode not only
gave them military prowess but a social status that was significantly more prestigious than the lowly
footsoldiers who were marching in great bands, stave in hand, unstrung bows over their shoulder.
Even greater throngs of more lowly non-combatants tried to keep pace with those trained for war.
Farmers sold their lands and tools, except for a plough and a few animals. Hitching a cart to their oxen,
they placed their remaining possessions in the vehicle, put their children on top and set out determinedly
for the Holy Land. Serfs too, with little more than a few coins, dependent upon charity, the bounty of
God, ran from the prospect of lifelong toil for their social superiors and, arming themselves with crude
weapons, obtained freedom in the ranks of the army of God. Among the crowds were women, also
present in their thousands. The presence of so many women dismayed the senior clergy, but popular
preachers distributed alms to them, so that they could find husbands and protectors. Some women,
though, had the temerity to dress as men and cast off the role that had been assigned them from birth.
As the great armies snaked their way along the old Roman roads, elderly men, monks, nuns, artisans and
peasants joined the expedition. The poor escorted the princes and the glittering knights, who in turn felt
some responsibility for the protection of the defenceless. And they died in great numbers. Ships full of
pilgrims sank in the Adriatic. Stragglers left trails of dead across hundreds of miles, especially once the
pilgrim armies were south-east of the Alps and could no longer count on the sympathy of Latin Christian
towns. Once in Muslim territory, enormous numbers of non-combatants died, both by the sword and from
the hardship of desert, mountain and disease.
It was an extraordinary, unprecedented, moment in human history; one whose repercussions are still with
us, like the distant ripples of a once powerful tidal wave. What did they think they were doing? Is it
possible to draw close enough to these people that we can have some understanding of their actions, their
motives, their hopes? Was it all, like Edward Gibbon believed, a monumental act of folly? Did their
shared goal mean that they had a common understanding of what they were doing: the lord of four castles
from France, with the servant from Germany? The aristocratic lady, a descendent of Charlemagne, with
her cook? How did they organise themselves? Did the expedition always follow a course set by the
princes? What happened when people of that era were thrown together in the face of annihilation, but
with the prospect of eternal salvation in their grasp? Did they maintain the social norms they were
accustomed to? Or did propriety break down?
These are hard questions to answer for an enterprise that took place nearly a thousand years ago. Thus,
even though the extraordinary nature of the First Crusade has attracted an immense amount of
investigation and attention, both of a popular and academic nature, there is still much to be said, and
much that will never been known. Even to approach tentative answers to such issues requires that a more
fundamental set of questions be examined. When, for example, the sources talk of ‘knights’, what do they
mean? When they refer to the ‘poor’, who, exactly, are they talking about? Like an astronomer who finds
they need to master particle physics to explain celestial phenomena, the historian who wishes to discuss
social dynamics has to involve themselves in the minutiae of contemporary language.
The contemporary accounts of the First Crusade, by eyewitnesses and those alive at the time, provide
answers to the questions above, providing it is understood what they mean when they employ terms like
milites, pauperes, minores or iuvenes. What such terms meant at the time of the First Crusade is not,
however, particularly well understood. In part this is because of the intrinsic obscurity of the subject, but
it is also because none of the great social historians of the medieval period devoted a major study to the
crusades.
Instead, figures like Georges Duby, Rodney Hilton, Abram Leon, and Perry Anderson have left fragments
of analysis: throwaway remarks, often rich in potential, but not elaborated. This has been a loss not just to
those interested in questions concerning social structure, but also to the study of the crusades in general.
A detailed analysis of the structure of First Crusade from a social perspective has, therefore, something of
value to offer those studying the subject from a variety of points of view, as well as to those readers
simply interested in deepening their understanding of the crusade. The ambition of this book is to supply
the groundwork that in so many other areas of history is taken for granted, even by those who would not
focus their work on social dynamics. In other words, to achieve as much clarity as possible as to which
social groupings were present on the Crusade, in what proportions, and with what structural tensions
between them.