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Crusades
Introduction
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© Photos.com/Thinkstock
Crusades, military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th
century, that were organized by western European Christians in
response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. Their
objectives were to check the spread of Islam, to retake control of
the Holy Land in the eastern Mediterranean, to conquer pagan
areas, and to recapture formerly Christian territories; they were
seen by many of their participants as a means of redemption and
expiation for sins. Between 1095, when the First Crusade was
launched, and 1291, when the Latin Christians were finally
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expelled from their kingdom in Syria, there were numerous
expeditions to the Holy Land, to Spain, and even to the Baltic;
the Crusades continued for several centuries after 1291, usually
as military campaigns intended to halt or slow the advance of
Muslim power or to conquer pagan areas. Crusading declined
rapidly during the 16th century with the advent of the Protestant
Reformation and the decline of papal authority.
Approximately two-thirds of the ancient Christian world had
been conquered by Muslims by the end of the 11th century,
including the important regions of Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and
Anatolia. The Crusades, attempting to check this advance,
initially enjoyed success, founding a Christian state in Palestine
and Syria, but the continued growth of Islamic states ultimately
reversed those gains. By the 14th century the Ottoman Turks
had established themselves in the Balkans and would penetrate
deeper into Europe despite repeated efforts to repulse them.
The Crusades constitute a controversial chapter in the history of
Christianity, and their excesses have been the subject of
centuries of historiography. The Crusades also played an
integral role in the expansion of medieval Europe.
The First Crusade and the establishment
of the Latin states
Background and context
Although still backward when compared with the other
civilizations of the Mediterranean basin, western Europe had
become a significant power by the end of the 11th century. It
was composed of several kingdoms loosely describable as
feudal. While endemic private warfare, brigandage, and
problems associated with vassalage and inheritance still existed,
some monarchies were already developing better-integrated
systems of government. At the same time, Europe was feeling
the effects of population growth that had begun toward the end
of the 10th century and would continue well into the 13th
century. An economic revival was also in full swing well before
the First Crusade; forestlands were being cleared, frontiers
pushed forward, and markets organized. Moreover, Italian
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shipping was beginning to challenge the Muslim predominance
in the Mediterranean. Especially significant for the Crusade was
a general overhaul of the ecclesiastical structure in the 11th
century, associated with the Gregorian Reform movement,
which enabled the popes to assume a more active role in society.
In 1095, for example, Urban II was in a position strong enough
to convoke two important ecclesiastical councils, despite
meeting resistance from Henry IV, the German emperor, who
opposed papal reform policies.
Thus it was that in the closing years of the 11th century western
Europe was abounding in energy and confidence. What is more,
as is evident in achievements such as the Norman Conquest of
England in 1066, Europeans possessed the capacity to launch a
major military undertaking at the very time the Seljuq Turks,
one of several tribes on the northeastern frontier of the Muslim
world who had embraced Islam in the 11th century, were
beginning to move south and west into Iran and beyond with all
the enthusiasm of a new convert.
THE EFFECTS OF RELIGION
The Crusades were also a development of popular religious life
and feeling in Europe, particularly in western Europe. The social
effect of religious belief at the time was complex: religion was
moved by tales of signs and wonders, and it attributed natural
disasters to supernatural intervention. At the same time,
laypersons were not indifferent to reform movements, and on
occasion they agitated against clergy whom they regarded as
unworthy. A peace movement also developed, especially in
France, under the leadership of certain bishops but with
considerable popular support. Religious leaders proclaimed the
Peace of God and the Truce of God, designed to halt or at least
limit warfare and assaults during certain days of the week and
times of the year and to protect the lives of clergy, travelers,
women, and cattle and others unable to defend themselves
against brigandage. It is particularly interesting to note that the
Council of Clermont, at which Urban II called for the First
Crusade (1095), renewed and generalized the Peace of God.
It may seem paradoxical that a council both promulgated peace
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and officially sanctioned war, but the peace movement was
designed to protect those in distress, and a strong element of the
Crusade was the idea of giving aid to fellow Christians in the
East. Tied to this idea was the notion that war to defend
Christendom was not only a justifiable undertaking but a holy
work and therefore pleasing to God.
Closely associated with this Western concept of holy war was
another popular religious practice, pilgrimage to a holy shrine.
Eleventh-century Europe abounded in local shrines housing
relics of saints, but three great centres of pilgrimage stood out
above the others: Rome, with the tombs of Saints Peter and
Paul; Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain; and
Jerusalem, with the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus Christ’s
entombment. Pilgrimage, which had always been considered an
act of devotion, had also come to be regarded as a more formal
expiation for serious sin, even occasionally prescribed as a
penance for the sinner by his confessor.
Yet another element in the popular religious consciousness of
the 11th century, one associated with both Crusade and
pilgrimage, was the belief that the end of the world was
imminent (see also eschatology and millennialism). Some
scholars have discovered evidence of apocalyptic expectations
around the years 1000 and 1033 (the millennium of the birth and
Passion of Jesus, respectively), and others have emphasized the
continuance of the idea throughout the 11th century and beyond.
Moreover, in certain late 11th-century portrayals of the end of
all things, the “last emperor,” now popularly identified with the
“king of the Franks,” the final successor of Charlemagne, was to
lead the faithful to Jerusalem to await the Second Coming of
Christ. Jerusalem, as the earthly symbol of the heavenly city,
figured prominently in Western Christian consciousness, and, as
the number of pilgrimages to Jerusalem increased in the 11th
century, it became clear that any interruption of access to the
city would have serious repercussions.
By the middle of the 11th century, the Seljuq Turks had wrested
political authority from the ʿAbbāsid caliphs of Baghdad. Seljuq
policy, originally directed southward against the Fāṭimids of
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Egypt, was increasingly diverted by the pressure of Turkmen
raids into Anatolia and Byzantine Armenia. A Byzantine army
was defeated and Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was captured
at Manzikert in 1071, and Christian Asia Minor was thereby
opened to eventual Turkish occupation. Meanwhile, many
Armenians south of the Caucasus migrated south to join others
in the region of the Taurus Mountains and to form a colony in
Cilicia.
Seljuq expansion southward continued, and in 1085 the capture
of Antioch in Syria, one of the patriarchal sees of Christianity,
was another blow to Byzantine prestige. Thus, although the
Seljuq empire never successfully held together as a unit, it
appropriated most of Asia Minor, including Nicaea, from the
Byzantine Empire and brought a resurgent Islam perilously
close to Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. It was this danger
that prompted the emperor, Alexius Comnenus, to seek aid from
the West, and by 1095 the West was ready to respond.
The turmoil of these years disrupted normal political life and
made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult and often impossible.
Stories of dangers and molestation reached the West and
remained in the popular mind even after conditions improved.
Furthermore, informed authorities began to realize that the
power of the Muslim world now seriously menaced the West as
well as the East. It was this realization that led to the Crusades.
Alexius’s appeal came at a time when relations between the
Eastern and Western branches of the Christian world were
improving. Difficulties between the two in the middle years of
the century had resulted in a de facto, though not formally
proclaimed, schism in 1054, and ecclesiastical disagreements
had been accentuated by Norman occupation of formerly
Byzantine areas in southern Italy. A campaign led by the
Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard against the Greek mainland
further embittered the Byzantines, and it was only after Robert’s
death in 1085 that conditions for a renewal of normal relations
between East and West were reasonably favourable. Envoys of
Emperor Alexius Comnenus thus arrived at the Council of
Piacenza in 1095 at a propitious moment, and it seems probable
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that Pope Urban II viewed military aid as a means toward
restoring ecclesiastical unity.
THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT
The Council of Clermont convoked by Urban on November 18,
1095, was attended largely by bishops of southern France as
well as a few representatives from northern France and
elsewhere. Much important ecclesiastical business was
transacted, which resulted in a series of canons, among them one
that renewed the Peace of God and another that granted a
plenary indulgence (the remission of all penance for sin) to
those who undertook to aid Christians in the East. Then in a
great outdoor assembly the pope, a Frenchman, addressed a
large crowd.
His exact words will never be known, since the only surviving
accounts of his speech were written years later, but he
apparently stressed the plight of Eastern Christians, the
molestation of pilgrims, and the desecration of the holy places.
He urged those who were guilty of disturbing the peace to turn
their warlike energies toward a holy cause. He emphasized the
need for penance along with the acceptance of suffering and
taught that no one should undertake this pilgrimage for any but
the most exalted of motives.
The response was immediate and overwhelming, probably far
greater than Urban had anticipated. Cries of “Deus le volt”
(“God wills it”) were heard everywhere, and it was decided that
those who agreed to go should wear a cross. Moreover, it was
not only warrior knights who responded; a popular element,
apparently unexpected and probably not desired, also came
forward.
The era of Clermont witnessed the concurrence of three
significant developments: first, there existed as never before a
popular religious fervour that was not without marked
eschatological tendencies in which the holy city of Jerusalem
figured prominently; second, war against the infidel had come to
be regarded as a religious undertaking, a work pleasing to God;
and finally, western Europe now possessed the ecclesiastical and
secular institutional and organizational capacity to plan such an
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enterprise and carry it through.
Preparations for the Crusade
© The British Library/Heritage-Images
© The British Library/Heritage-Images
Following Pope Urban’s speech, preparations began in both East
and West. Emperor Alexius, who had doubtless anticipated the
mustering of some sort of auxiliary force, apparently soon
realized that he would have to provide for and police a much
larger influx of warriors. In the West, as the leaders began to
assemble their armies, those who took the cross sought to raise
money, often by selling or mortgaging property, both for the
immediate purchase of equipment and for the long-term needs
of the journey.
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© Photos.com/Thinkstock
© Photos.com/Thinkstock
As preparations were under way, several less-organized bands
of knights and peasants, commonly known as the “People’s
Crusade,” set out across Europe. The most famous of these,
brought together by a remarkable popular preacher, Peter the
Hermit, and his associate Walter Sansavoir, reached
Constantinople after having caused considerable disorder in
Hungary and Bulgaria. Alexius received Peter cordially and
advised him to await the arrival of the main Crusade force. But
the rank and file grew unruly, and on August 6, 1096, they were
ferried across the Bosporus. While Peter was in Constantinople
requesting additional aid, his army was ambushed at Cibotus
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(called Civetot by the Crusaders) and all but annihilated by the
Turks.
Peter the Hermit’s preaching in Germany inspired other groups
of Crusaders, who also failed to reach Jerusalem. One of these
groups was led by the notorious Count Emicho and was
responsible for a series of pogroms, or massacres, of Jews in
several Rhenish towns in 1096. Traditionally recognized as an
important turning point in Jewish and Christian relations in the
Middle Ages—in fact, it is often cited as a pivotal moment in
the history of anti-Semitism—these attacks occurred first in
Speyer and then with increasing ferocity in Worms, Mainz, and
Cologne. The Jews of these towns often sought, and sometimes
received, the protection of the bishop or futilely took refuge in
local homes and temples. Forced by the Crusaders to convert or
die, many Jews chose death. There are accounts of Jews’
committing suicide and even killing their children rather than
converting or submitting to execution by the Crusaders. Though
zealotry of this nature is not unique to Christianity, these
massacres did not go unnoticed even by fellow Christians.
Indeed, some contemporary Christian accounts attributed the
defeat of the People’s Crusade to them. After the massacres, the
Crusaders moved on to Hungary, where they were routed by the
Hungarian king and suffered heavy losses. Emicho, who may
not have participated in all the pogroms, escaped and returned
home in disgrace.
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© Photos.com/Thinkstock
© Photos.com/Thinkstock
The main Crusading force, which departed in August 1096 as
Urban directed, consisted of four major contingents. A smaller,
fifth force, led by Hugh of Vermandois, brother of King Philip I
of France, left before the others but was reduced by shipwreck
while crossing the Adriatic from Bari to Dyrrhachium (now
Durrës, Albania). Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the first large
army to depart and duke of Lower Lorraine since 1087, was the
only major prince from the German kingdom involved in the
Crusade, though he and his associates largely spoke French.
Joined by his brothers, Eustace and Baldwin, and a kinsman,
Baldwin of Le Bourcq, Godfrey took the land route and crossed
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Hungary without incident. Markets and provisions were
supplied in Byzantine territory, and, except for some pillaging,
the army reached Constantinople without serious problems on
December 23, 1096.
A second force was organized by Bohemond, a Norman from
southern Italy. The son of Robert Guiscard, Bohemond was on
familiar ground across the Adriatic, where he had fought with
his father and was understandably feared by the Byzantines.
However, he was 40 years old when he arrived at
Constantinople on April 9, 1097, and determined to come to
profitable terms with his former enemy.
The third and largest army was assembled by Raymond of
Saint-Gilles, the count of Toulouse. At age 55, he was the oldest
and most prominent of the princes on the Crusade, and he
aspired and perhaps expected to become the leader of the entire
expedition. He was accompanied by Adhémar, bishop of Le
Puy, whom the pope had named as legate for the Crusade.
Raymond led his followers, including a number of
noncombatant pilgrims whom he supported at his own expense,
across northern Italy, around the head of the Adriatic Sea, and
then southward into Byzantine territory. This large body caused
considerable trouble in Dalmatia and clashed with Byzantine
troops as it approached the capital, where Raymond arrived on
April 21.
Meanwhile, the fourth army, under Robert of Flanders, had
crossed the Adriatic from Brindisi. Accompanying Robert were
his cousin Robert of Normandy (brother of King William II of
England) and Stephen of Blois (the son-in-law of William the
Conqueror). No king took part in the First Crusade, and the
predominantly French-speaking participants came to be known
by the Muslims as Franks.
The presence near Constantinople of massive military forces,
numbering perhaps 4,000 mounted knights and 25,000 infantry,
posed a serious problem for Alexius, and there was occasional
disorder. Forced to consider imperial interests, which, it soon
became evident, were different from the objective of the
Crusaders, the emperor required each Crusade leader to promise
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under oath to restore to him any conquered territory that had
belonged to the empire before the Turkish invasions and to
swear loyalty to him while the Crusaders remained in his
domain. Since there was never any plan for the Crusade to go
beyond the far-flung borders of the old Roman Empire, this
would effectively give all conquests to the emperor. Only
Bohemond willingly took the emperor’s oath. The others did so
under duress, and Raymond swore only a lukewarm oath to
respect the property and person of the emperor. Despite this,
Raymond and Alexius became good friends, and Raymond
remained the strongest defender of the emperor’s rights
throughout the Crusade.
From Constantinople to Antioch
Late in May 1097 the Crusaders and a contingent of Byzantine
soldiers reached the capital of the Turkish sultanate, Nicaea
(now İznik, Turkey), which surrendered to the Byzantines on
June 19. The Crusade army left Nicaea for Antioch on June 26
and found crossing the arid and mountainous Anatolia difficult.
At Dorylaeum on July 1, 1097, Turks attacked the advance
column of the Crusader army. Despite the heat and a rain of
arrows, the Crusaders held their ground, and, when the rest of
the army drew up, the Turks were routed. A major victory in
open warfare had been achieved by cooperation between the
separate Western contingents and the Greeks.
Further advance across Anatolia was even more arduous, and it
was only after suffering many casualties, especially in the region
of the Taurus Mountains, that the Crusaders arrived near
Antioch on October 20. Meanwhile, Godfrey’s brother Baldwin
left the main army to involve himself in Armenian politics and
then became ruler of Edessa. The first of the Crusader states, the
county of Edessa would provide a valuable buffer against
Turkish attacks on Antioch and other Christian territories.
One of the great cities of the Levant and one of the patriarchal
sees of Christianity, Antioch was surrounded by an enormous
circle of walls studded with more than 400 towers. Despite
reinforcements and supplies from Genoese and English ships
and later from the patriarch of Jerusalem, then in Cyprus, the
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siege proved long and difficult, and many died of starvation or
disease. Spring brought the threat of counterattack by a relief
force under Kerbogha of Mosul. The situation seemed so
hopeless that some Crusaders deserted and attempted to return
home. Among these was Peter the Hermit, who was caught and
returned to the host, where he was quietly forgiven. Another
deserter was the French knight Stephen of Blois, who was cut
off from the main body of the army by Kerbogha’s forces and
judged, not unreasonably, that the Crusaders were doomed. On
his way home Stephen met Alexius, who was marching at the
head of a Byzantine relief force, and convinced him that
Antioch’s cause was hopeless. The emperor’s decision to turn
back, however justified tactically, was a diplomatic blunder;
when the Crusaders learned of the emperor’s move, they felt
free from any obligation to return the city to him.
Bohemond, meanwhile, proposed that the first to enter the city
should have possession of it, provided the emperor did not make
an appearance. The Norman had, in fact, already made contact
with a discontented commander within, who proceeded to admit
him over a section of the walls on June 3, 1098. The other
Crusaders followed Bohemond into the dozing city and quickly
captured it. Only the citadel held out.
Thus, Antioch was restored to Christian rule. The victory,
however, was incomplete. Kerbogha arrived with an enormous
Turkish army and completely invested the city, which was
already very low on provisions. Once again the situation seemed
hopeless. Disagreements between the leaders persisted and were
accentuated by arguments over the validity of what had come to
be called the Holy Lance, which a Provençal priest found below
the cathedral and insisted was the lance that, according to the
Gospels, had pierced the side of Jesus Christ when he hung on
the cross. Nonetheless, on June 28 the Crusader army moved out
of the city. The Turkish forces were not of high quality and had
only tenuous loyalty to Kerbogha. When they saw the size of the
Crusade forces and the resolve of the men, the Turks began to
flee. With the evaporation of Kerbogha’s army, the citadel
finally surrendered to Bohemond, and its garrison was permitted
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to leave. Rejoicing was tempered by a devastating epidemic that
took many lives, including that of the legate, Adhémar of Le
Puy, who, as the spiritual leader of the Crusade, had been a wise
counselor and a stabilizing influence whom the leaders could ill
afford to lose.
The Crusade leaders then fell into violent disagreement over the
final disposition of Antioch. Bohemond, who had been
responsible for the capture of the city and then had led its
defense, wanted it for himself. Raymond, however, insisted that
it be returned to the emperor. Unable to come to terms on
Antioch, Bohemond and Raymond refused to march to
Jerusalem, which effectively stalled the Crusade. The leaders
agreed to depart only after the rank and file threatened to tear
down the walls of Antioch. On January 13, 1099, the army then
set out for Jerusalem under the leadership of Raymond of SaintGilles. As they moved south, Tancred and Robert of Normandy
and, later, Godfrey and Robert of Flanders joined them.
Bohemond, ignoring his previous oaths, remained in Antioch.
The siege of Jerusalem
Not far from Beirut, the army entered the territory of the Fāṭimid
caliphs of Cairo, who, as Shīʿite Muslims, were enemies of the
Sunnite Seljuqs and the caliphs of Baghdad. In August 1098 the
Fāṭimids had occupied Jerusalem. The final drive of the First
Crusade, therefore, was against the Fāṭimids of Egypt, not the
Seljuqs.
On June 7, 1099, the Christian army—by then considerably
reduced to perhaps 1,200–1,500 cavalry and 12,000 foot
soldiers—encamped before Jerusalem, whose governor was well
supplied and confident that he could withstand a siege until a
relief force arrived from Egypt. The Crusaders, on the other
hand, were short of supplies and would be until six vessels
arrived at Jaffa (Yafo) and managed to unload before the port
was blockaded by an Egyptian squadron. On July 8 a strict fast
was ordered, and, with the Muslims scoffing from the walls, the
entire army, preceded by the clergy, marched in solemn
procession around the city, thence to the Mount of Olives, where
Peter the Hermit preached with his former eloquence.
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Siege towers were carried up to the walls on July 13–14, and on
July 15 Godfrey’s men took a sector of the walls, and others
followed on scaling ladders. When the nearest gate was opened,
Tancred and Raymond entered, and the Muslim governor
surrendered to the latter in the Tower of David. The governor,
along with his bodyguard, was escorted out of the city. Tancred
promised protection in the Aqṣā Mosque, but his orders were
disobeyed. Hundreds of men, women, and children, both
Muslim and Jewish, perished in the general slaughter that
followed.
The Crusaders, therefore, attained their goal three long years
after they had set out. Against the odds this struggling, fractious,
and naive enterprise had made its way from western Europe to
the Middle East and conquered two of the best-defended cities
of the time. From a modern perspective, the improbability of the
First Crusade’s success is staggering. For medieval men and
women, though, the agent of victory was God himself, who
worked miracle after miracle for his faithful knights. It was this
firm belief that would sustain centuries of Crusading.
The Crusader states
A successful surprise attack on the Egyptian relief army ensured
the Crusaders’ occupation of Palestine. Having fulfilled their
vows of pilgrimage, most of the Crusaders departed for home,
leaving the problem of governing the conquered territories to the
few who remained. Initially, there was disagreement concerning
the nature of the government to be established, and some held
that the holy city should be ruled under ecclesiastical authority.
As an interim measure, Godfrey was elected to govern and took
the modest title of Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.
In December 1099, in the midst of this confused situation,
Bohemond and Baldwin of Edessa arrived in Jerusalem to fulfill
their Crusader vows. Accompanying Bohemond was Daimbert,
the archbishop of Pisa, who was chosen patriarch and received
the homage of both Godfrey and Baldwin. If Daimbert had
ambitions to govern Jerusalem, they were thwarted when, on
Godfrey’s death, his brother Baldwin was summoned back to
Jerusalem, where he assumed the title of king (November 11,
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1100). Thus, there had come into being not a church state but a
feudal kingdom of Jerusalem.
Securing the new Christian territories was now of utmost
concern. The Crusade of 1101, for example, was organized by
Pope Paschal II to reinforce Christian rule in the Holy Land, but
it collapsed in Asia Minor. King Baldwin, however, profited
nonetheless from the chronic rivalries of his Muslim neighbours.
He was also able to extend his control along the coastline with
the aid of Italians and in one instance of a Norwegian squadron
that arrived under King Sigurd in 1110. By 1112 Arsuf,
Caesarea, Acre, Beirut, and Sidon had been taken, and the entire
coast except for Ascalon and Tyre was in Latin hands.
Meanwhile, castles had been built in Galilee, the frontier pushed
southward, and Crusader states formed in the north. The county
of Edessa, an ill-defined domain extending into the upper
Euphrates region with a population consisting mainly of
Armenians and Syrians, had already been established by
Godfrey’s brother Baldwin. When Baldwin left to become ruler
of Jerusalem, he bestowed the county, under his suzerainty, on
his cousin Baldwin of Le Bourcq.
Antioch had not been returned to the emperor, and Bohemond
had consolidated his position there. The city was predominantly
Greek in population, though there were also Syrians and
Armenians, and the latent Greek-Latin friction was intensified
when Bohemond replaced the Greek patriarch with a Latin one.
When Bohemond was captured by the Muslims in 1100, his
nephew Tancred became regent and expanded the frontiers of
the principality to include the important port of Latakia, taken
from the Byzantines in 1103. Not long after his release in 1103,
Bohemond traveled to Europe, where he succeeded in winning
over Pope Paschal II to the idea of a new Crusade. Whatever the
original intention, there resulted not an expedition against
Muslims but an attack on the Byzantine city of Dyrrhachium.
Like its predecessor, the ill-fated campaign of 1082, the
enterprise failed, and in 1108 Bohemond was forced to take an
oath of vassalage to the emperor for Antioch and to return to
Italy, where he died in 1111. Tancred, again in power, ignored
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his uncle’s oath, and Antioch and its patriarchate remained a
source of controversy.
A fourth Crusader state was established on the coast in the
vicinity of Tripoli (Arabic Tarābulus) by Raymond of SaintGilles, who had been outmaneuvered in Jerusalem and had
returned to Constantinople hoping for aid from the Byzantine
emperor, to whom he had always been loyal. In 1102 he
returned to Syria, took Tortosa (Ṭarṭūs), and began the siege of
Tripoli. But he died in 1105, and it remained for his descendants
to finish the task in 1109.
The establishment and protection of the frontier was, for the
new states, a problem conditioned by geography and the politics
of Levantine Islam. From Antioch south, the Crusaders held a
narrow strip of coastland bounded by mountains to the north and
by the Jordan Valley in the south. To the east beyond the Syrian
desert lay the Muslim cities of Aleppo, Ḥamāh, Ḥimṣ, and
Damascus. Though the Franks did push southward to Aylah (or
Elim, modern Al-ʿAqabah), all attempts to move eastward
failed, and it was necessary to erect castles at vulnerable points
along the eastern frontier as well as along the coast and inland.
Among the most famous of these were Krak de Montréal, in the
Transjordan, and Krak des Chevaliers, in the county of Tripoli.
Meanwhile, the hostility between Shīʿite Egypt and Sunnite
Baghdad continued for some time. The emirates in between the
two powers remained divided in their allegiance, and those in
the north feared the Seljuqs of Iconium.
After Baldwin I’s death in 1118, the throne passed to his cousin
Baldwin of Le Bourcq (Baldwin II), who left Edessa to another
cousin, Joscelin of Courtenay. In 1124 Tyre, the last great city
north of Ascalon still in Muslim hands, was taken with the aid
of the Venetians, who, as was customary, received a section of
the city. Baldwin II was succeeded by Fulk of Anjou, a
newcomer recommended by Louis VI of France. Fulk was
married to Baldwin’s daughter Melisende. In 1131 Baldwin and
Joscelin both died. They were the last of the first generation of
Crusaders, and with their passing the formative period in the
history of the Crusader states came to an end.
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Fulk’s policies ended the pursuit of expansion and resulted in a
stabilization of the frontiers of the Crusader states. This was a
wise course, because his reign coincided with the rise of Zangī,
atabeg (Turkish: “governor”) of Mosul, whose achievements
earned him a reputation as a great champion of the jihad (holy
war) against the Franks. When Zangī moved against Damascus,
the Muslims of that city and the Christians of Jerusalem formed
an alliance against their common enemy, a diplomatic initiative
that was common among the second-generation Franks.
The northern Crusader states, however, were in great danger.
The Byzantines had recovered their influence in Anatolia and
were putting pressure on Armenia and Antioch. Emperor
Manuel Comnenus forced Prince Raymond of Antioch to
acknowledge imperial suzerainty. But the greater danger to both
Antioch and Armenia was dramatically brought home by
Zangī’s capture of Edessa in 1144. Attempts at recovery failed,
and the northernmost Crusader state was subsequently overrun.
The era of the Second and Third
Crusades
The Second Crusade
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Reproduced by permission of the British Library
Reproduced by permission of the British Library
It had long been apparent that Edessa was vulnerable, but its
loss came as a shock to Eastern and Western Christians. Urgent
pleas for aid soon reached Europe, and in 1145 Pope Eugenius
III issued a formal Crusade bull, Quantum praedecessores
(“How Much Our Predecessors”). It was the first of its kind,
with precisely worded provisions designed to protect Crusaders’
families and property and reflecting contemporary advances in
canon law. The Crusade was preached by St. Bernard of
Clairvaux in France and, with the aid of interpreters, even in
Germany. Bernard revolutionized Crusade ideology, asserting
that the Crusade was not merely an act of charity or a war to
secure the holy places but a means of redemption. In his mercy,
Christ offered the warriors of Europe a blessed avenue of
salvation, a means by which they could give up all they had to
follow him.
As in the First Crusade, many simple pilgrims responded.
Unlike the First Crusade, however, the Second Crusade was led
by two of Europe’s greatest rulers, King Louis VII of France
and Emperor Conrad III of Germany. Louis enthusiastically
supported the Crusade, but Conrad was reluctant at first and was
won over only by the eloquence of St. Bernard. The Second
Crusade also differed from its predecessor in that there were
three objectives instead of one. While the kings of Germany and
France marched east to restore Edessa, other Crusaders went to
Spain to fight Muslims or to the shores of the Baltic Sea to fight
the pagan Wends.
The situation in the East was also different. Manuel Comnenus,
the Byzantine emperor, was not pleased to discover another
Crusade headed toward Constantinople. The Second Crusade
wreaked havoc with his foreign policy, which included an
alliance with Germany, Venice, and the pope against the
Normans. It also complicated the emperor’s peaceful
relationship with the Turkish sultan of Rūm. Manuel made a
truce with the sultan in 1146 to make certain that the Crusade
would not cause the sultan to attack Byzantine lands in Asia.
Although sound strategically, the emperor’s move confirmed for
19
many Western Christians the apostasy of the Greeks.
Conrad left in May 1147, accompanied by many German
nobles, the kings of Poland and Bohemia, and Frederick of
Swabia, his nephew and the future emperor Frederick I
(Frederick Barbarossa). Conrad’s poorly disciplined troops
created tension in Constantinople, where they arrived in
September. Conrad and Manuel, however, remained on good
terms, and both were apprehensive about the moves of King
Roger II of Sicily, who during these same weeks seized Corfu
and attacked the Greek mainland.
Conrad, rejecting Manuel’s advice to follow the coastal route
around Asia Minor, moved his main force past Nicaea directly
into Anatolia. On October 25 at Dorylaeum, not far from where
the First Crusaders won their victory, his army, weary and
without adequate provisions, was set upon by the Turks and
virtually destroyed. Conrad, with a few survivors, retreated to
Nicaea.
Louis VII, accompanied by his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine,
followed the land route across Europe and arrived at
Constantinople on October 4, about a month after the Germans.
A few of his more hotheaded followers, on hearing that Manuel
had made a truce with the Turks of Iconium and totally
misunderstanding his motives, accused the emperor of treason
and urged the French king to join Roger in attacking the
Byzantines. Louis preferred the opinion of his less-volatile
advisers and agreed to restore any imperial possessions he might
capture.
In November the French reached Nicaea, where they learned of
Conrad’s defeat. Louis and Conrad then started along the coastal
route, with the French now in the vanguard, and reached
Ephesus. Conrad became seriously ill and returned to
Constantinople to the medical ministrations of Manuel. After
recuperating, he eventually reached Acre by ship in April 1148.
The French passage from Ephesus to Antioch in midwinter was
extremely harrowing. Supplies ran short, and the Byzantines
were unjustly blamed. Manuel defended his cities against the
angry Crusaders, which meant that the French spent more
20
energy fighting Christians than Muslims. Louis concluded that
the Greeks were trying to weaken the Crusade. He also had lost
the bulk of his troops to Turkish attacks by the time he reached
Antioch, which was ruled by Eleanor’s uncle, Prince Raymond.
The Crusade’s original goal of recapturing Edessa was no longer
feasible, because Nūr al-Dīn, the son and successor of Zangī,
had massacred the city’s Christian inhabitants, making it
difficult to take and hold Edessa with the forces available.
Raymond urged an attack on Aleppo, Nūr al-Dīn’s centre of
power. But King Louis, who resented Eleanor’s open espousal
of Raymond’s project, left abruptly for Jerusalem and forced the
queen to join him.
In Jerusalem, where Conrad had already arrived, many French
and German notables assembled with Queen Melisende, her son
Baldwin III, and the barons of Jerusalem to discuss how best to
proceed. Despite the absence of the northern princes and the
losses already suffered by the Crusaders, it was possible to field
an army of nearly 50,000 men, the largest Crusade army so far
assembled. After considerable debate, which revealed the
conflicting purposes of Crusaders and Jerusalem barons, it was
decided to attack Damascus.
How the decision was reached is not known. Damascus was
undoubtedly a tempting prize. Its ruler, Unur, fearful of the
expanding power of Nūr al-Dīn, was the one Muslim ruler most
disposed to cooperating with the Franks. However, Unur was
now forced to seek the aid of his former enemy to thwart them.
And Nūr al-Dīn was not slow to move toward Damascus. Not
only was the Crusader campaign poorly conceived, but it was
badly executed. On July 28, after a four-day siege, with Nūr alDīn’s forces nearing the city, it became evident that the
Crusader army was dangerously exposed, and a retreat was
ordered. It was a humiliating failure, attributable largely to the
conflicting interests of the participants.
Conrad decamped for Constantinople, where he agreed to join
the emperor against Roger of Sicily. Louis’s reaction was
different. His resentment against Manuel, whom he blamed for
the failure, was so great that he accepted Roger’s offer of ships
21
to take him home and agreed to a plan for a new Crusade against
Byzantium. Lacking papal support, the plan came to nothing,
but the perception that the Byzantines were part of the problem
rather than the solution became widespread in Europe.
The Second Crusade had been promoted with great zeal and had
aroused high hopes. Its collapse caused deep dismay. Searching
for an explanation, St. Bernard turned to Scripture and preached
that the Crusade failed because of the sinfulness of Europe.
Only through the purification and prayers of Christian men and
women would God relent and bestow victory on his knights
once more. This belief became central to Crusading ideology
and an important impetus for movements of lay piety during the
Middle Ages. The Muslims, on the other hand, were enormously
encouraged by the collapse of the Second Crusade because they
had confronted the danger of another major Western expedition
and had triumphed.
The Crusader states to 1187
During the 25 years following the Second Crusade, the kingdom
of Jerusalem was governed by two of its ablest rulers, Baldwin
III (reigned 1143–62) and Amalric I (1163–74). In 1153 King
Baldwin captured Ascalon, extending the kingdom’s coastline
southward, though this would be the Franks’ last major
conquest. Its possession was offset the next year by the
occupation of Damascus by Nūr al-Dīn, one more stage in the
encirclement of the Crusader states by a single Muslim power.
In 1160–61 the possibility that the Fāṭimid caliphate in Egypt,
shaken by palace intrigues and assassinations, might collapse
under the influence of Muslim Syria caused anxiety in
Jerusalem. Thus, in 1164, when Nūr al-Dīn sent his lieutenant
Shīrkūh to Egypt accompanied by his own nephew, Saladin,
King Amalric decided to intervene. After some maneuvering,
the armies of both Amalric and Shīrkūh withdrew, as they were
to do again three years later.
Meanwhile, Amalric, realizing the necessity of Byzantine
cooperation, had sent Archbishop William of Tyre as an envoy
to Constantinople. In 1168, before the news of the agreement
that William of Tyre had arranged reached Jerusalem, the king,
22
for reasons unknown, set out for Egypt. The venture failed, and
Shīrkūh entered Cairo. On his death (May 23, 1169), Saladin,
then Nūr al-Dīn’s deputy, was left to overcome the remaining
opposition and assume control of Egypt.
When the Byzantine fleet and the army finally arrived in 1169,
there was some delay, and both armies were forced by
inadequate provisions and seasonal rains to retreat once again,
each side blaming the other for the lack of confrontation. In
1171 Saladin obeyed Nūr al-Dīn’s order to have the prayers in
the mosques mention the caliph of Baghdad instead of the caliph
of Cairo, whose health was failing. Thus ended the Fāṭimid
caliphate and the great division in Levantine Islam from which
the Latins had profited.
Ominous developments followed the deaths of both Amalric and
Nūr al-Dīn in 1174. In 1176 the Seljuqs of Iconium defeated the
armies of Emperor Manuel Comnenus at Myriocephalon. It was
a shattering blow reminiscent of Manzikert a century earlier.
When Manuel died in 1180, all hope of effective ByzantineLatin cooperation vanished. Three years later Saladin occupied
Aleppo, virtually completing the encirclement of the Latin
states. In 1185 he agreed to a truce and left for Egypt.
In Jerusalem Amalric was succeeded by his son Baldwin IV, a
13-year-old boy suffering from leprosy. Despite the young
king’s extraordinary fortitude, his precarious health necessitated
continuous regencies and created a problem of succession until
his sister Sibyl bore a son, the future Baldwin V, to William of
Montferrat. Her subsequent marriage in 1180 to Guy of
Lusignan, a newcomer to the East and brother of Amalric,
accentuated existing rivalries between the barons. A kind of
“court party”—centring around the queen mother, Agnes of
Courtenay, her daughter Sibyl, and Agnes’s brother, Joscelin III
of Edessa, and now including the Lusignans—was often
opposed by another group comprising mostly the so-called
native barons—old families, notably the Ibelins, Reginald of
Sidon, and Raymond III of Tripoli, who through his wife was
also lord of Tiberias. In addition to these internal problems, the
kingdom was the most isolated ever. Urgent appeals to the West
23
and the efforts of Pope Alexander III had brought little response.
Baldwin IV died in March 1185, leaving, according to previous
agreement, Raymond of Tripoli as regent for the child king
Baldwin V. But when Baldwin V died in 1186, the court party
outmaneuvered the other barons and, disregarding succession
arrangements that had been formally drawn up, hastily crowned
Sibyl. She in turn crowned her husband, Guy of Lusignan.
In the midst of near civil war, Reginald of Châtillon, lord of
Kerak and Montréal, broke the truce with the Muslims by
attacking a caravan. Saladin replied by proclaiming jihad against
the Latin kingdom. In 1187 he left Egypt, crossed the Jordan
south of the Sea of Galilee, and took up a position close to the
river. Near Sepphoris (modern Ẓippori) the Crusaders mobilized
an army of perhaps 20,000 men, which included some 1,200
heavily armed cavalry. In a spot well chosen and adequately
supplied with water and provisions, they waited for Saladin—
who, by some estimates, had about 30,000 men, half of whom
were light cavalry—to make the first move.
On July 2 Saladin blocked the main road to Tiberias and sent a
small force to attack the town, hoping that Count Raymond’s
wife’s presence there would lure the Crusaders into the open. It
was Raymond, however, who initially persuaded the king not to
fall into the trap. But, late that night, others, accusing the count
of treason, prevailed upon the king to change his mind. This
fateful decision would lead to the destruction of the Crusader
army. On July 3 the Crusaders undertook an exhausting day’s
march, spent a terrible night without water, and were surrounded
and constantly harassed. The following day they faced Saladin’s
forces at the Horns of Ḥaṭṭin and fought throughout the day,
with smoke from grass fires set by the enemy pouring into their
faces. When the infantry broke ranks, the essential coordination
with the cavalry was shattered, and the Crusaders’ fate was
sealed. By the time Saladin’s final charge ended the battle, most
of the knights had been slain or captured. Only Raymond of
Tripoli, Reginald of Sidon, Balian of Ibelin, and a few others
escaped.
The king’s life was spared, but Saladin killed Reginald of
24
Châtillon and ordered the execution of some 200 Templars and
Hospitallers (religio-military orders discussed below). Other
captive knights were treated honourably, and most were later
ransomed. Less fortunate were the foot soldiers, most of whom
were sold into slavery. Virtually the entire military force of the
kingdom of Jerusalem had been destroyed. To make matters
worse, Saladin captured the relic of the True Cross, which he
sent to Damascus, where it was paraded through the streets
upside down.
Saladin quickly followed up his victory in the Battle of Ḥaṭṭin
by taking Tiberias and moving toward the coast to seize Acre
(ʿAkko). By September 1187 he and his lieutenants had
occupied most of the major strongholds in the kingdom and all
the ports south of Tripoli Jubayl and Botron (Al-Batrūn) in the
county of Tripoli and Tyre in the kingdom. On October 2
Jerusalem, then defended by only a handful of men under the
command of Balian of Ibelin, capitulated to Saladin, who agreed
to allow the inhabitants to leave once they had paid a ransom.
Though Saladin’s offer included the poor, several thousand
apparently were not redeemed and probably were sold into
slavery. In Jerusalem, as in most of the cities captured, those
who stayed were Syrian or Greek Christians. Somewhat later
Saladin permitted a number of Jews to settle in the city.
Meanwhile, Saladin continued his conquests in the north, and by
1189 all of the kingdom was in his hands except Belvoir
(modern Kokhov ha-Yarden) and Tyre. The county of Tripoli
and the principality of Antioch were each reduced to the capital
city and a few outposts. The majority of the 100-year-old Latin
establishment in the Levant had been lost.
The institutions of the First Kingdom
The four principalities established by the Crusaders—three after
the loss of Edessa in 1144—were loosely connected, and the
king of Jerusalem’s limited suzerainty over Antioch and Tripoli
became largely nominal after mid-century. Each state was
organized into a pattern of lordships by the ruling Christian
minority. The institutions of the kingdom of Jerusalem are best
known, partly because its history figures more prominently in
25
both Arab and Christian chronicles but especially because its
documents were better preserved. In the 13th century the famous
legal compilation the Assises de Jérusalem (Assizes of
Jerusalem) was prepared in the kingdom. Though this collection
reflects a later situation, certain sections and many individual
enactments can be traced back to the 12th century, the period
known as the First Kingdom.
In the first half of the 12th century, the kingdom presented the
appearance of a typical European monarchy, with lordships
owing military service and subject to fiscal exactions. There
were, however, important differences, not only in the large
subject population of diverse ethnic origins but also with respect
to the governing minority. No great families with extensive
domains emerged in the early years, and the typical noble did
not, as in Europe, live in a rural castle or manor house. Although
castles existed, they were garrisoned by knights and,
increasingly as the century advanced, by the religio-military
orders. Most barons in the kingdom lived in the fortified towns.
The kings, moreover, possessed a considerable domain and
retained extensive judicial rights, which made the monarchy a
relatively strong institution in early Jerusalem.
Toward the middle of the century, this situation changed. Partly
as a consequence of increased immigration from the West, the
baronial class grew, and a relatively small group of magnates
with large domains emerged. As individuals, they were less
disposed to brook royal interference, and, as a class and in the
court of barons (Haute Cour, or High Court), they were capable
of presenting a formidable challenge to royal authority. The last
of the kings of Jerusalem to exercise effective power was
Amalric I in the 12th century. In the final years of the First
Kingdom, baronial influence was increasingly evident and
dissension among the barons, as a consequence, more serious.
THE MILITARY ORDERS
26
2:32
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz
Another serious obstacle to the king’s jurisdiction, which did
not exist in the same form in the West, was the extensive
authority of the two religion-military orders. The Knights of the
Hospital of St. John, or Hospitallers, was founded in the 11th
century by the merchants of Amalfi to provide hospital care for
pilgrims. The order never abandoned its original purpose, and,
in fact, as its superb collection of documents reveals, the order’s
philanthropic activities expanded. But during the 12th century,
in response to the military needs of the kingdom, the
Hospitallers also became an order of knights, as did the
Templars, the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of
Solomon, so named because of their headquarters in the former
temple of Solomon. The Templars originated as a monasticmilitary organization dedicated to protecting pilgrims on the
way to Jerusalem, and their rule, composed by St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, was officially sanctioned by the Council of Troyes
(1128). Although the Templars and Hospitallers took monastic
vows, their principal function was soldiering.
The orders grew rapidly and acquired castles at strategic points
in the kingdom and in the northern states. They maintained
27
permanent garrisons in these castles and supplemented the
otherwise inadequate forces of the barons and king. Moreover,
because they were soon established in Europe as well, they
became international organizations. Virtually independent,
sanctioned and constantly supported by the papacy, and exempt
from local ecclesiastical jurisdiction, they aroused the jealousy
of the clergy and constituted a serious challenge to royal
authority.
The Crusaders introduced into the conquered lands a Latin
ecclesiastical organization and hierarchy. The Greek patriarch of
Antioch was removed, and all subsequent incumbents were
Latin except in one brief period before 1170, when imperial
pressure brought about the installation of a Greek. The Eastern
Orthodox patriarch in Jerusalem left before the conquest and
died soon after. All his successors were Latin.
Under Latin jurisdiction were the entire Latin population as well
as those natives who remained Orthodox—Greeks in Antioch
and Greeks or Syrians (Melchites) in Jerusalem. Beyond that
jurisdiction were a larger number of non-Chalcedonians
Chalcedonians
(both Syriac and Armenian) and some few members of the
Assyrian Church of the East (so-called Nestorians), all adherents
of doctrines that had deviated from the decisions of 5th-century
ecumenical councils. A number of Maronites of the Lebanon
region accepted the Latin obedience late in the 12th century.
After some initial confusion, the native hierarchies were able to
resume their functions.
As in the West, the church had its own courts and possessed
large properties. But each ecclesiastical domain was required to
furnish soldiers, and there were considerable charitable
foundations. The hierarchy of the Latin states was an integral
part of the church of the West. Papal legates regularly visited the
East, and bishops from the Crusader states attended the third
Lateran Council in 1179. Western monastic orders also appeared
in the Crusader states.
In addition to the nobles and their families who had settled in
the kingdom, a substantially larger number of persons were
28
classified as bourgeois. A small number had arrived with the
First Crusade; however, most were later immigrants from
Europe, representing nearly every nationality but predominantly
from rural southern France. In the East they became town
dwellers, though a few were agriculturalists—proprietors of
small estates, rarely themselves tillers of the soil, inhabiting the
more modest towns. It appears some immigrants, perhaps poor
pilgrims who remained, failed to obtain a reasonably settled
status and could not afford the relatively small ransom offered
by Saladin in 1187.
The townspeople of the First Kingdom did not, like their
counterparts in Europe, aspire to political autonomy. There were
no communal movements in the 12th century. The bourgeois
were, therefore, subject to a king or seigneur. Some did military
service as sergeants—i.e., mounted auxiliaries or foot soldiers.
The bourgeois were recognized as a class in the more than 30
“courts of the bourgeois” according to procedures laid down in
the Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois (Assizes of the Court of
the Bourgeois), which, unlike other parts of the Assizes of
Jerusalem, reflect the traditions of Roman law in southern
France.
The Italians had acquired exceptional privileges in the ports
because they supplied the indispensable naval aid and shipping
essential to regular contact with Europe. These privileges
usually included a quarter that they maintained as a virtually
independent enclave. Its status was guaranteed by treaty
between the kingdom and the “mother” city (Venice, Genoa,
Pisa, etc.).
European settlers in the Crusader states, however, were only a
small minority of the population. If the early Crusaders were
ruthless, their successors, except for occasional outbursts during
campaigns, were remarkably tolerant and flexible in dealing
with the diverse sectors of the local population. Muslim town
dwellers who had not fled were captured and put to menial
tasks. Some, it is true, appeared in Italian slave marts, but royal
and ecclesiastical ordinances at least restricted slave owners’
actions. Baptism brought with it immediate freedom.
29
Few Muslims were slaves. Most of those who remained were
peasants who for centuries had been a large part of the rural
population and who were permitted to retain their holdings,
subject to fiscal impositions not unlike those of the European
serf and usually identical to those originally levied by their
former proprietors on all non-Muslims. Muslim nomads, or
Bedouin, who from time immemorial had moved their herds
with the changing seasons, were granted their traditional rights
of pasturage by the king.
Most mosques were appropriated during the conquest, but some
were restored, and no attempt was made to restrict Muslim
religious observance. Occasionally a mihrab (prayer niche) was
retained for Muslim worshipers in a church that had formerly
been a mosque. The tolerance of the Franks, noted by Arab
visitors, often surprised and disturbed newcomers from the
West.
LEGAL PRACTICES
Native Christians were governed according to the Assizes of the
Court of the Bourgeois. Each national group retained its
institutions. The Syrians, for example, maintained a court
overseen by the rais (raʾīs), a chieftain of importance under the
Frankish regime. An important element in the kingdom’s army,
the corps of Turcopoles, made up of lightly armed cavalry units,
was composed largely of native Christians, including,
apparently, converts from Islam. The principle of personality of
law applied to all: the Jew took oath on the Torah, the Samaritan
on the Pentateuch, the Muslim on the Qurʾān, and the Christian
on the Gospels.
The Jewish community of Palestine, which had declined in the
11th century, was drastically reduced by the First Crusade. As
the Latin kingdom settled into a routine of government,
however, the situation improved. Indeed, there is reason to
believe that the later, more stable regime made possible a notinconsiderable Jewish immigration—not, it seems, as in earlier
times, from the neighbouring lands of the Middle East but from
Europe.
Thus, by the 1170s the Crusader states of Outremer, as the area
30
of Latin settlement came to be called, had developed wellestablished governments. With allowance made for regional
differences (e.g., Antioch in its early years under the Norman
dynasty was somewhat more centralized), the institutions of the
northern states resembled those of Jerusalem. The governing
class of Franks was no longer made up of foreign conquerors
but comprised local residents who had learned to adjust to a new
environment and were concerned with administration. A few—
such as Reginald of Sidon and William of Tyre, the archbishop
and chancellor, respectively—were fluent in Arabic. Many
others knew enough of the language to deal with the local
inhabitants. Franks adopted native dress, ate native food,
employed native physicians, and married Syrian, Armenian, or
converted Muslim women.
But the Franks of Outremer, though they sometimes acquired a
love of luxury and comfort, did not lose the will or ability to
confront danger; nor did they “go native.” In fundamentals, they
were Latin Christians who adhered to the traditions of their
French forebears. The Assizes were in French, and other
documents were drawn up in Latin. William of Tyre, born in the
East but educated in Europe, wrote a celebrated Historia rerum
in partibus transmarinis gestarum (History of Deeds Done
Beyond the Sea) in the Latin style of the 12th century.
Artists and architects were influenced by Byzantine and Arab
craftsmen, but Oriental motifs were usually limited to details,
such as doorway carvings. A psalter for Queen Melisende in the
12th century, for example, shows certain Byzantine
characteristics, and the artist may have lived in Constantinople,
but the manuscript is in the then current tradition of French art.
Castles followed Byzantine models and were often built on the
old foundations, though Western ideas were also incorporated.
New churches were built or additions made to existing
structures, as, for example, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in
the Romanesque style of the homeland.
All in all, the Franks of the First Kingdom developed a
distinctive culture and achieved a sense of identity. Until
baronial dissensions weakened the monarchy in later years, the
31
Latin kingdom showed remarkable vitality and ingenuity. It was
one of the more sophisticated governmental achievements of the
Middle Ages.
The Third Crusade
The news of the fall of Jerusalem reached Europe even before
the arrival there of Archbishop Josius of Tyre, whom the
Crusaders had sent with urgent appeals for aid. Pope Urban III
soon died, shocked, it was said, by the sad news. His successor,
Gregory VIII, issued a Crusade bull and called for fasting and
penitence.
Before a new Crusade could be organized, however, a modest
recovery had begun in the East. Scarcely two weeks after Ḥaṭṭin,
Conrad of Montferrat, Baldwin V’s uncle, had landed at Tyre
with a small Italian fleet and a number of followers. He
immediately established himself sufficiently to stave off an
attack by Saladin. Conrad also refused to submit to King Guy
when Saladin released the king at the end of 1188 as promised.
In a daring move to reestablish his authority, Guy suddenly
gathered his few followers and besieged Acre, taking Saladin
completely by surprise. When the Muslim leader finally moved
his army toward the city, the Crusaders camped outside had
begun to receive reinforcements from the West, many under the
banner of Henry of Champagne. By the winter of 1190–91,
neither side had made progress; Saladin could not relieve the
city, but the Crusaders had suffered losses from disease and
famine.
Among the victims of disease was Guy’s wife, Sibyl, the source
of his claims to the throne. Many of the older barons who had
thus far supported him now turned to Conrad. The marriage of
Sibyl’s sister, Isabel, to Humphrey of Toron was forthwith
annulled, and she was constrained to marry Conrad. But Guy
refused to abandon his claim to the throne. Such was the
situation in May 1191 when ships arrived off Acre bringing
welcome supplies and news of the approach of the armies of the
Third Crusade.
32
Courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
The first ruler to respond to the papal appeal was William II of
Sicily, who immediately abandoned a conflict with Byzantium
and equipped a fleet that soon left for the East, though William
himself died in November 1189. English, Danish, and Flemish
ships also departed. Meanwhile, Gregory VIII had sent a
legation to the Holy Roman emperor and participant in the
Second Crusade, Frederick Barbarossa, now nearly 70 years old
and approaching the end of an eventful career. Although
excommunicated by Pope Alexander III and a supporter of
antipopes in the 1160s and ’70s, Frederick had made peace with
the church in 1177 and for some time had been genuinely
desirous of going on Crusade again.
He set out in May 1189 with the largest Crusade army so far
assembled and crossed Hungary into Byzantine territory. The
Byzantine emperor, Isaac II Angelus, had made a secret treaty
with Saladin to impede Frederick’s progress through Greece,
which he did quite effectively. Frederick responded by capturing
the Byzantine city of Adrianople, returning it only when Isaac
agreed to transport the Germans across the Hellespont into
33
Turkey. In May 1190 Frederick reached Iconium after defeating
a Seljuq army. His forces then crossed into Armenian territory.
On June 10 Frederick, who had ridden ahead with his
bodyguard, was drowned while attempting to swim a stream.
His death broke the morale of the German army, and only a
small remnant, under Frederick of Swabia and Leopold of
Austria, finally reached Tyre. To Saladin and the Muslims, who
had been seriously alarmed by Frederick’s approach, the
emperor’s death seemed an act of God.
In Europe, Archbishop Josius had won over Philip II Augustus
of France and Henry II of England, whose son and successor,
Richard I (Richard the Lion-Heart), took up the cause when
Henry died in 1189. The extensive holdings of the English
Angevin kings in France and especially Philip’s desire to
recover Normandy, however, posed problems that were difficult
to lay aside even during a common enterprise. Thus, it was not
until July 4, 1190, three years after Ḥaṭṭin, that the English and
French rulers met at Vézelay and prepared to move with their
armies.
The two kings who finally led the Third Crusade were very
different persons. Richard had opposed his father and was
distrustful of his brothers. He could be lavishly generous even to
his adversaries but often violent to anyone who stood in his
way. His abilities lay not in administration, for which he had no
talent, but in war, at which he was a genius. The favourite son of
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard epitomized the chivalrous
Crusader and personified the contemporary troubadour’s view
of war with all its aristocratic courtoisie. Richard could honour
his noble Muslim opponents but be utterly ruthless to lowborn
captives.
Unlike Richard, Philip II had been king for 10 years and was a
skilled and unscrupulous politician. He had no love for
ostentation. Though no warrior himself, he was adept at
planning sieges and designing siege engines. But he was a
reluctant Crusader whose real interests lay in the expansion of
his own domains.
At the suggestion of King William II, Richard and Philip met at
34
Messina, in Sicily, where they signed an agreement outlining
their mutual obligations and rights on the Crusade. Philip
arrived with the French fleet at Acre on April 20, 1191, and the
siege was begun again in earnest.
After a stormy passage, Richard put in at Cyprus, where his
sister Joan and his fiancée, Berengaria of Navarra, had been
shipwrecked and held by the island’s Byzantine ruler, a rebel
prince, Isaac Comnenus. Isaac underestimated Richard’s
strength and attacked. Not only did Richard defeat and capture
him, but he proceeded to conquer Cyprus, an important event in
the history of the Crusades. The island would remain under
direct Latin rule for the next four centuries and would be a vital
source of supplies throughout the Third Crusade and beyond.
Even after the fall of the Crusader states, Cyprus remained a
Christian outpost in the East.
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© Photos.com/Thinkstock
© Photos.com/Thinkstock
Richard left Cyprus and arrived on June 8 at Acre, where he
reinvigorated the siege. A month later, after constant battering at
the walls by siege engines and after Saladin’s nephew had failed
to fight his way into the city, the garrison surrendered in
violation of Saladin’s orders. The Muslim leader was shocked
by the news but nevertheless ratified the surrender agreement. In
exchange for the lives of the Muslim garrison, he agreed to
return the True Cross, render 200,000 dinars, and release all his
Christian prisoners—still more than 1,000 men.
As the Crusaders entered the city, disputes arose over the
disposal of areas. Richard offended Leopold of Austria, and
36
Philip, who felt that he had fulfilled his Crusader’s vow and
who was unwell, left for home in August. Though the English
and French troops resented Philip’s departure, it did leave
Richard in control. When Saladin failed to pay the first
installment of the ransom for the prisoners on schedule, Richard
flew into a rage. He ordered that all 2,700 members of the
Muslim garrison be marched outside the city and executed in
view of Saladin and his army. Saladin responded by massacring
most of his Christian hostages. Clearly, the deal was off.
The first and only pitched battle between the forces of Saladin
and the Third Crusade occurred on September 7, 1191, at Arsuf.
Richard’s military brilliance won the day, forcing Saladin to
retreat with heavy losses, while the English king’s casualties
were very light. After Arsuf, Saladin decided not to risk open
battle with Richard again, who quickly recaptured Jaffa and
established it as his base of operations. Richard next
reestablished Christian control of the coast and refortified
Ascalon to the south. Twice Richard led the Crusaders to
Jerusalem, yet on both occasions he was forced to retreat after
coming within sight of the holy city. Without control of the
hinterland, the king knew that he could not hold Jerusalem for
long. Although tactically sound, Richard’s refusal to lay siege to
the city was bitterly unpopular among the rank and file. As a
result, his suggestion that the Crusade attack Saladin’s power
base in Egypt was rejected by most of the Crusaders.
After Philip returned to France, he preyed upon Richard’s lands;
though forbidden by the church, these actions were lucrative
nonetheless. Richard received urgent messages from home
requesting his return. Meanwhile, he had been in constant
communication with Saladin and his brother al-ʿĀdil, and
various peace proposals were made, which included marriage
alliances. In fact, there seemed to be warm cordiality and
considerable mutual respect between Richard and Saladin.
Finally, on September 2, 1192, the two signed a three-year
peace treaty. The coast from Jaffa north remained in Christian
hands, but Ascalon was to be restored to Saladin after Richard’s
men demolished the fortifications that they had painstakingly
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built. Pilgrims were to have free access to the holy places. On
October 9 Richard left. He was shipwrecked and finally fell into
the hands of Leopold of Austria, who had not forgotten the
slight at Acre.
The Third Crusade had failed to attain its main objective, the
retaking of Jerusalem, but in every other way it was a great
success. Most of Saladin’s victories in the wake of Ḥaṭṭin were
wiped away. Before he left, Richard consented to the request
that Guy, who had lost the support of nearly all the barons, be
deposed and Conrad immediately be accepted as king. No
sooner was this done than Conrad was killed by members of the
Nizārī Ismāʿīliyyah, a movement within Shīʿite Islam. Isabel
was persuaded to marry Henry of Champagne, and Guy was
given the governorship of Cyprus, where his record was far
more successful than his ill-starred career in Jerusalem.
Although he had failed to recapture Jerusalem, Richard had put
the Christians of the Levant back on their feet.
The Latin East after the Third Crusade
Saladin died on March 3, 1193, not long after the departure of
the Third Crusade. One of the greatest Muslim leaders, a man
devoutly religious and deeply committed to jihad against the
infidel, he was, nevertheless, respected by his opponents. His
death led once again to divisions in the Muslim world, and his
Ayyūbid successors were willing to continue a state of truce
with the Crusaders, which lasted into the early years of the 13th
century. The truce was politically and economically
advantageous for both sides, and the Italians were quick to make
profitable trade connections in Egypt. The Franks were able to
adjust to the new situation and to organize what in effect was a
new titular kingdom of Jerusalem, centring on Acre and
generally known as the Second Kingdom.
In 1194 Amalric of Lusignan succeeded his brother Guy as ruler
of Cyprus, where he later accepted investiture as king from the
chancellor of Emperor Henry VI. In 1197, following the death
of Henry of Champagne, Amalric succeeded to the throne of
Jerusalem-Acre, and in 1198 he married the thrice-widowed
Isabel. He chose, however, to govern his two domains
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separately, and in Acre he proved to be an excellent
administrator. The Livre au Roi (Book of the King), an
important section of the Assizes of Jerusalem, dates from his
reign. He also dealt wisely with Saladin’s brother, al-ʿĀdil of
Egypt. On Amalric’s death in 1205, the kingdoms of Cyprus and
Jerusalem-Acre were divided, and in 1210 the latter was given
to John of Brienne, a French knight nominated by Philip, who
went east and married Conrad’s daughter, Mary.
There were also adjustments in the two northern states. When
Raymond III of Tripoli died (1187), his county passed to a son
of Bohemond III of Antioch, which thus united the two
principalities. In general, Antioch-Tripoli followed the relatively
independent course laid down by Bohemond III.
Armenia was more closely involved in Latin politics, partly as a
result of marriage alliances with the house of Antioch-Tripoli.
King Leo II of Armenia joined the Crusaders at Cyprus and
Acre. Desirous of a royal crown, he approached both pope and
emperor, and in 1198, with papal approval, royal insignia were
bestowed by Archbishop Conrad of Mainz, in the name of
Henry VI. At the same time, the Armenian church officially
accepted a union with Rome, which, however, was never
popular with the lower clergy and the general populace.
The Fourth Crusade and the Latin empire
of Constantinople
Pope Innocent III was the first pope since Urban II to be both
eager and able to make the Crusade a major papal concern. In
1198 he called a new Crusade through legates and encyclical
letters. In 1199 a tax was levied on all clerical incomes—later to
become a precedent for systematic papal income taxes—and
Fulk of Neuilly, a popular orator, was commissioned to preach.
At a tournament held by Thibaut III of Champagne, several
prominent French nobles took the cross. Among them was
Geoffrey of Villehardouin, author of one of the principal
accounts of the Crusade; other important nobles joined later, and
contact was made with Venice to provide transport.
Unfortunately, Thibaut of Champagne died before the Crusaders
39
departed for Venice, and the barons turned to Boniface of
Montferrat, whose involvement as leader of the Crusade proved
to be fateful. He had close family ties with both the Byzantine
Empire and the Crusader states. His brother, Conrad of
Montferrat, had received the crown of Jerusalem only to be
killed by members of the Nizārī Ismāʿīliyyah shortly thereafter.
Before going to the Holy Land, Conrad had married the sister of
Emperor Isaac II Angelus and received the title of Caesar.
Boniface was also the vassal of Philip of Swabia, who was a
contender for the German throne and the son-in-law of Isaac II.
In 1195 Isaac was blinded and deposed by his brother, who took
the throne as Alexius III. Several years later Isaac’s son, also
named Alexius, escaped from Constantinople and fled to
Philip’s court. At Christmas 1201 Boniface, Philip, and the
young Alexius discussed the possibility of using the Crusade to
depose Alexius III and place the young man on the throne.
Boniface sought the approval of the pope for the diversion, but
Innocent refused to allow it. The young Alexius also journeyed
to Rome but had no better luck with Innocent III. Despite the
papal prohibition, Boniface and the Byzantine prince still hoped
to find a way to move the Crusade toward Constantinople on its
way to the Holy Land.
When the Crusade army arrived in Venice in the summer of
1202, it was only one-third of its projected size. This was a
serious problem, since the French had contracted with the
Venetians for a fleet and provisions that they now realized they
neither needed nor could afford. The Venetians had incurred
enormous expense for the French and were understandably upset
by their inability to pay. The leader of Venice, Doge Enrico
Dandolo, was a man of great sagacity and prudence who was in
his 90s and completely blind by the time of the Crusade.
Dandolo proposed that if the French would assist the Venetians
in capturing the rebellious city of Zadar (now in Croatia), he
would be willing to suspend the outstanding debt until it could
be paid in captured booty. With few options, the Crusaders
agreed, even though Zadar was a Christian city under the control
of the king of Hungary, who had taken the Crusader’s vow.
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Innocent was informed of the plan, but his veto was disregarded.
In November 1202 the Crusaders captured Zadar and wintered
there. Reluctant to jeopardize the Crusade, Innocent gave
conditional absolution to the Crusaders, but not to the
Venetians.
Meanwhile, envoys from Philip of Swabia arrived at Zadar with
an offer from Alexius, the Byzantine prince. If the Crusaders
would sail to Constantinople and topple the reigning emperor,
Alexius would place the Byzantine church in submission to
Rome, pay the Crusaders an enormous sum, and join the
Crusade to Egypt (now the centre of Muslim power in the
Levant) with a large army. It was a tempting offer for an
enterprise that was short on funds. The Crusade leaders accepted
it, but a great many of the rank and file wanted nothing to do
with the proposal, and many deserted. The Crusade sailed to
Corfu before arriving in Constantinople in late June 1203. After
the Crusaders attacked the northeastern corner of the city and
then set a destructive fire, the citizens of Constantinople turned
against Alexius III, who then fled. The Byzantine prince was
elevated to the throne as Alexius IV along with his blind father,
Isaac II.
Although the new emperor tried to make good his promises to
the Crusaders, he soon ran short of money. He also faced antiLatin hatred in Constantinople, which had been endemic for
decades and now reached a fever pitch. Alexius IV, who owed
his throne to Latins, became bitterly unpopular and was finally
toppled in a palace coup in late January 1204. The Crusaders,
now cheated of their reward and disgusted at the treachery of the
Byzantines, declared war on Constantinople, which fell to the
Fourth Crusade on April 12, 1204. What followed was one of
the most profitable and disgraceful sacks of a city in history.
Despite their oaths and the threat of excommunication, the
Crusaders ruthlessly and systematically violated the city’s holy
sanctuaries, destroying, defiling, or stealing all they could lay
hands on. Many also broke their vows to respect the women of
Constantinople and assaulted them. When Innocent III heard of
the conduct of his pilgrims, he was filled with shame and
41
strongly rebuked them.
Before the capture of the city, the Crusaders had decided that 12
electors (6 Venetians and 6 Franks) should choose an emperor
who would rule one-fourth of the imperial domain. The other
three-fourths was to be divided. The clergy of the party that did
not include the emperor-elect were to oversee Hagia Sophia and
choose a patriarch. A small amount of property was specifically
designated to support the clergy, and the rest was divided as
booty.
Once order had been restored, the Franks and the Venetians
implemented their agreement; Baldwin of Flanders was elected
emperor, and the Venetian Thomas Morosini was chosen
patriarch. Various Latin-French lordships throughout Greece—
in particular, the duchy of Athens and the principality of the
Morea—did provide cultural contacts with western Europe and
promoted the study of Greek. There was also a French impact on
Greece. Notably, a collection of laws, the Assises de Romanie
(Assizes of Romania), was produced. The Chronicle of the
Morea appeared in both French and Greek (and later Aragonese)
versions. Impressive remains of Crusader castles and Gothic
churches can still be seen in Greece. Nevertheless, the Latin
empire always rested on shaky foundations. Indeed, not all the
Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Crusade. The imperial
government continued in Nicaea, and the offshoot empire of
Trebizond, at the eastern end of the Black Sea, lasted until 1461.
The Byzantine despotate of Epirus was also established, and the
Bulgarians remained hostile to the Crusaders. Finally, in 1261 a
sadly diminished Constantinople was reconquered by Michael
VIII Palaeologus with the aid of Genoa, the traditional rival of
Venice. The city, however, would never be the same. For the
remainder of its Christian history, it would remain poor,
dilapidated, and largely abandoned.
The belief that the conquest of Constantinople would help
Crusading efforts was a mirage. Indeed, the opposite was true,
for the unstable Latin empire siphoned off much of Europe’s
Crusading energy. The legacy of the Fourth Crusade was the
deep sense of betrayal the Latins had instilled in their Greek
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coreligionists. With the events of 1204, the schism between the
Catholic West and Orthodox East was complete.
Crusades of the 13th century
The Albigensian Crusade
By permission of the British Library
By permission of the British Library
By the middle of the 12th century, control of Jerusalem and the
Holy Land was no longer the only goal of the Crusades. Rather,
Crusading became a special class of war called by the pope
against the enemies of the faith, who were by no means confined
to the Levant. Crusades continued in the Baltic region against
pagans and in Spain against Muslims. Yet in the heart of Europe
a more serious threat faced Christendom—heresy. In the
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medieval world, heresy did not represent benign religious
diversity but was seen as a cancerous threat to the salvation of
souls. It was held to be even more dangerous than the faraway
Muslims, because it harmed the body of Christ from within.
The most vibrant heresy in Europe was Catharism, also known
as Albigensianism for the Albi, a city in southern France where
it flourished. A dualist belief, Catharism held that the universe
was a battleground between good, which was spirit, and evil,
which was matter. Human beings were believed to be spirits
trapped in physical bodies. The leaders of the religion, the
perfects, lived with great austerity, remaining chaste and
avoiding all foods that came from sexual union.
The church had attempted for years to root out the heresy from
southern France, where it remained popular, particularly among
the nobility. St. Dominic, who was sent to the region to preach
to the people and debate the Cathar leaders, formed his Order of
Preachers (Dominicans) in response to the heresy. All efforts at
eradication failed, however, largely because of the tolerance of
the Cathari maintained by Raymond VI of Toulouse, the greatest
baron of the area, and by most secular lords in the region.
Shortly after his excommunication for abetting the heretics,
Raymond was implicated in the murder of a papal legate sent to
investigate the situation. For Pope Innocent III that was the final
straw. In March 1208 he called for a Crusade against Raymond
and the heretics of Languedoc, which began the following year.
The Albigensian Crusade was immensely popular in northern
France because it gave pious warriors an opportunity to win a
Crusade indulgence without traveling far from home or serving
more than 40 days. During the first season the Crusaders
captured Béziers in the heart of Cathar territory and—following
the instructions of the papal legate who allegedly said, “Kill
them all. God will know his own,” when asked how the
Crusaders should distinguish the heretics from true Christians—
massacred almost the entire population of the city. With the
exception of Carcassonne, which held out for a few months,
much of the territory of the Albigeois surrendered to the
Crusaders. Command of the Crusade was then given to Simon,
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lord of Montfort and earl of Leicester, who had served during
the Fourth Crusade. Abandoning the Crusade after it attacked
the Christians at Zadar, Simon went to fight in the Holy Land.
The Albigensian Crusade dragged on for several years, with new
recruits arriving each spring to assist Simon. By the end of the
summer, however, they would all return home, leaving him with
a skeleton force to defend his gains. By 1215, when the fourth
Lateran Council met to consider the state of the church, Simon
had captured most of the region, including Toulouse. The
council gave the lands to Simon and then rescinded the Crusade
indulgence for the war so that a new Crusade to the East could
be organized.
A few years later a rebellion against the northerners that
crystallized around Raymond and his son, Raymond VII,
recaptured much lost territory. Simon was killed during a siege
of Toulouse. The Albigensian Crusade was finally brought to a
close by the French King Louis VIII. Although he died soon
after his victory in the south, Louis restored northern control
over the region in 1226 and dashed the hopes of Raymond’s
family for an independent Toulouse. In 1229 the younger
Raymond accepted a peace through which all his ancestral lands
would go to the royal house of the Capetians at his death. It was,
therefore, the French crown, which came to the Crusade quite
late, that was the ultimate victor.
For all of its violence and destruction, the Albigensian Crusade
failed to remove the Cathar heresy from Languedoc. It did,
however, provide a solid framework of new secular lords willing
to work with the church against the heretics. Through the
subsequent efforts of the Dominican inquisitors, Catharism was
virtually eliminated in Languedoc within a century.
The Children’s Crusade
The same strong feelings of piety and righteousness that led
knights to take the cross and march to war also affected the
common people, who lacked the wealth or training to do the
same. The repeated failure of the organized Crusades to reclaim
Jerusalem and the True Cross frustrated all Christians. This
combination of frustration and strong religious enthusiasm led
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to frequent and sometimes bizarre manifestations of popular
piety, such as the so-called Children’s Crusade in 1212.
The Children’s Crusade was neither a true Crusade nor made up
of an army of children. The pope did not call for it—indeed, no
one did. Instead, it was an unsanctioned popular movement,
whose beginning and ending are hard to trace. It is known,
however, that in early 1212 a young man named Nicholas from
Cologne became the focal point for a popular movement that
swept through the Rhineland. After having allegedly received
divine instruction, Nicholas set out to rescue Jerusalem from the
Muslims. He believed that when he reached the Mediterranean,
God would dry up the waters so that he could walk across to
Palestine. Hundreds and then thousands of children, adolescents,
women, the elderly, the poor, parish clergy, and the occasional
thief joined him in his march south. In every town the people
hailed the “Crusaders” as heroes, although the educated clergy
ridiculed them as deranged or deceived. In July 1212, despite
the summer heat that had caused many to give up and return
home, Nicholas and his followers crossed the Alps into Italy.
Word of Nicholas’s Crusade spread across Europe, sparking
similar “miracles” and popular movements, although usually on
a much smaller scale. One such movement, which may actually
have preceded the Rhineland Crusade, occurred in Cloyes, a
small town in France, where Stephen, a 12-year-old shepherd,
had a vision of Jesus, who appeared dressed as a pilgrim and
asked for bread. After receiving some bread from the boy, Jesus
gave him a letter for the king of France. Stephen then left for
Paris and attracted hundreds of followers from the same
constituency that Nicholas of Cologne did. As they marched
toward Paris, they sang, “Lord God, exalt Christianity! Lord
God, restore to us the True Cross!” When they reached the city,
Stephen delivered the letter to Philip Augustus. The king
thanked the boy for the letter, and then everyone cheered and
went home. The letter’s contents are not known with certainty,
but it was probably an exhortation for the king to once again
Crusade—something Philip had no intention of doing.
By late summer Nicholas’s multitudes had reached Lombardy
46
and entered various port cities. Nicholas himself arrived with a
large gathering at Genoa on August 25. To the great
disappointment of the “Crusaders,” the sea did not open for
them, nor did it allow them to walk across its waves. At this
point many probably returned home, while others remained in
Genoa. It was said that some marched to Rome, where Innocent
III praised their zeal but released them from their “vows.” The
fate of Nicholas is also unclear. Some claimed that he joined the
Fifth Crusade, others that he died in Italy.
The Teutonic Knights and the Baltic Crusades
Founded during the Third Crusade, the Teutonic Knights were a
German military order modeled on the Hospitallers. By the 13th
century the order had begun to shift its focus from the Holy
Land to Europe. From 1211 to 1225 it waged war against
pagans in Transylvania and effectively Christianized the region,
but it was subsequently expelled by the king of Hungary. The
grand master of the order, Hermann von Salza, then agreed to
assist the Polish duke Conrad of Mazovia in his war against the
pagan Prussians of the Baltic region. The emperor and the pope
agreed that the Teutonic Knights should rule all pagan lands that
they conquered, and during the 13th and 14th centuries the order
conquered all of Prussia and the northern Baltic region, building
a prosperous Christian state there. As rulers the Teutonic
Knights played an important part in European history for many
centuries.
The Fifth Crusade
The Children’s Crusade revealed that, despite repeated failures,
Europeans were still committed to recapturing Jerusalem and
rescuing the True Cross. Almost immediately after the Fourth
Crusade, Innocent III began planning for another expedition to
the East. Although delayed by controversies involving the
imperial succession and related matters, Innocent was ready to
call the warriors of Christendom to fight for the restoration of
Western rule in the Holy Land by 1213. Innocent learned from
the mistakes of the Fourth Crusade and was determined that the
new effort be controlled every step of the way by the church. He
commissioned a new corps of Crusade preachers, who were
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specially trained and then dispatched strategically to garner
warriors. Innocent also sent out legates to oversee recruitment
and preparations. He wanted this new Crusade to be an inclusive
effort. Those who could not physically march to the East were
enjoined to help the Crusade through prayer and fasting. Those
with sufficient funds could share in the Crusade indulgence by
financing a Crusader who would otherwise be unable to go. At
the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the blueprints for the new
campaign were drafted, and all of Europe was directed to take
part. Innocent, however, died before the first Crusaders left, and
his successor, Honorius III, would oversee the progress of the
Fifth Crusade.
The first contingents of the Fifth Crusade, led by King Andrew
of Hungary, reached Acre in the fall of 1217. Andrew
accomplished little, however, before departing in January 1218.
A large fleet of Frisian, German, and Italian Crusaders arrived in
April and joined the remnants of Andrew’s force. In May the
combined army set out for Egypt under the leadership of John of
Brienne (the titular king of Jerusalem from 1210). The idea of
capturing Egypt in order to break Muslim power in the region
before turning to Jerusalem had been endorsed by Richard the
Lion-Heart during the Third Crusade. Although controversial
then, by the time of the Fifth Crusade it was the accepted
strategy among Crusade leaders. By August the Crusaders had
captured a strategic tower at Damietta. In September the
expedition organized under papal auspices and consisting
mainly of French Crusaders arrived under the legate CardinalLegate Pelagius. Since Pelagius maintained that the Crusaders
were under the jurisdiction of the church, he declined to accept
the leadership of John of Brienne and often interfered in military
decisions.
By February 1219 the Muslims were seriously alarmed and
offered peace terms that included the cession of the kingdom of
Jerusalem, including the holy city, as well as the return of the
True Cross. King John and many of the Crusaders were eager to
accept, but Pelagius, supported by the military orders and the
Italians, refused. Damietta was finally taken on November 5,
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1219, and for more than a year no further progress was made.
Pelagius remained optimistic, still expecting the arrival of Holy
Roman Emperor Frederick II—who had promised to go on
Crusade in 1215—and convinced of the imminent approach of a
legendary Asian Christian “King David.” In July 1221 he
ordered an advance on Cairo, which King John opposed but
joined. Unfortunately, Pelagius, who knew nothing about the
hydrography of the Nile, chose a campsite susceptible to the
river’s annual floods. Al-Malik al-Kāmil, the Egyptian sultan,
opened the sluice gates, and the Crusade army was hopelessly
bogged down and forced to surrender. In return for their lives,
the Crusaders agreed to evacuate Damietta and leave Egypt. It
was a bitter defeat, for, although Jerusalem had been at their
fingertips throughout the Crusade, they were now forced to
retreat with nothing.
Always on the verge of success, the Fifth Crusade failed largely
because of divided leadership and the frequently unwise
decisions of Pelagius. It might perhaps have succeeded if
Frederick II had set out as promised, and it is significant that
disillusioned critics blamed the emperor and the pope as well as
Pelagius. All in all, it was a dreary episode, relieved only by the
presence of Francis of Assisi, whom Pelagius reluctantly
permitted to cross the lines, where he was courteously received
by al-Malik al-Kāmil. However, despite Francis’s heartfelt plea,
the Muslim leader declined his offer to convert to Christianity.
The Crusade of Frederick II
The failure of the Fifth Crusade placed a heavy responsibility on
Frederick II, whose motives as a Crusader are difficult to assess.
A controversial figure, he has been regarded by some as the
archenemy of the popes and by others as the greatest of
emperors. His intellectual interests included Islam, and his
attitude might seem to be more akin to that of the Eastern barons
than the typical Western Crusader. Through his marriage to John
of Brienne’s daughter Isabella (Yolande), he established a claim
first to the kingship and then, on Isabella’s death in 1228, to the
regency of Jerusalem (Acre). As emperor, he could claim
suzerainty over Cyprus because his father and predecessor,
49
Henry VI, was paid homage by the Cypriot king and bestowed a
crown on him.
After being allowed several postponements by the pope to settle
affairs in the empire, Frederick finally agreed to terms that
virtually placed his expedition under papal jurisdiction. Yet his
entire Eastern policy was inextricably connected with his
European concerns: Sicily, Italy and the papacy, and Germany.
Cyprus-Jerusalem became, as a consequence, part of a greater
imperial design.
Most of his Crusade fleet left Italy in the late summer of 1227,
but Frederick was delayed by illness. During the delay he
received envoys from al-Malik al-Kāmil of Egypt, who,
threatened by the ambitions of his Ayyūbid brothers, was
disposed to negotiate. Meanwhile, Pope Gregory IX, less patient
than his predecessor, rejected Frederick’s plea that illness had
hindered his departure and excommunicated the emperor. Thus,
when Frederick departed in the summer of 1228 with the
remainder of his forces, he was in the equivocal position of a
Crusader under the ban of the church. He arrived in Cyprus on
July 21.
In Cyprus, John of Ibelin, the leading member of the influential
Ibelin family, had been named regent for the young Henry I.
Along with most of the barons, he was willing to recognize the
emperor’s rights as suzerain in Cyprus. But because news of
Isabella’s death had arrived in Acre, the emperor could claim
only a regency there for his infant son. John obeyed the
emperor’s summons to meet him in Cyprus but, despite
intimidation, refused to surrender his lordship of Beirut and
insisted that his case be brought before the high court of barons.
The matter was set aside, and Frederick left for Acre.
In Acre, Frederick met more opposition. News of his
excommunication had arrived, and many refused to support him.
Dependent, therefore, on the Teutonic Knights and his own
small contingent of German Crusaders, he was forced to attempt
what he could by diplomacy. Negotiations, accordingly, were
reopened with al-Malik al-Kāmil.
The treaty of 1229 is unique in the history of the Crusades. By
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diplomacy alone and without major military confrontation,
Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and a corridor running to the sea were
ceded to the kingdom of Jerusalem. Exception was made for the
Temple area, the Dome of the Rock, and the Aqṣā Mosque,
which the Muslims retained. Moreover, all current Muslim
residents of the city would retain their homes and property.
They would also have their own city officials to administer a
separate justice system and safeguard their religious interests.
The walls of Jerusalem, which had already been destroyed, were
not rebuilt, and the peace was to last for 10 years.
Nevertheless, the benefits of the treaty of 1229 were more
apparent than real. The areas ceded were not easily defensible,
and Jerusalem soon fell into disorder. Furthermore, the treaty
was denounced by the devout of both faiths. When the
excommunicated Frederick entered Jerusalem, the patriarch
placed the city under interdict. No priest was present, and
Frederick placed a crown on his own head while one of the
Teutonic Knights read the ceremony. Leaving agents in charge,
he hastily returned to Europe and at San Germano made peace
with the pope (July 23, 1230). Thereafter his legal position was
secure, and the pope ordered the patriarch to lift the interdict.
Jerusalem and Cyprus, however, were now plagued by civil war
because Frederick’s imperial concept of government was
contrary to the well-established preeminence of the Jerusalem
baronage. The barons of both Jerusalem and Cyprus, in alliance
with the Genoese and a commune formed in Acre that elected
John of Ibelin mayor, resisted the imperial deputies, who were
supported by the Pisans, the Teutonic Knights, Bohemond of
Antioch, and a few nobles. The clergy, the other military orders,
and the Venetians stood aloof.
The barons were successful in Cyprus, and in 1233 Henry I was
recognized as king. Even after John of Ibelin, the “Old Lord of
Beirut,” died in 1236, resistance continued. In 1243 a parliament
at Acre refused homage to Frederick’s son Conrad, unless he
appeared in person, and named Alice, queen dowager of Cyprus,
regent.
Thus it was that baronial rule triumphed over imperial
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administration in the Levant. But the victory of the barons
brought to the kingdom not strength but continued division,
which was made more serious by the appearance of new forces
in the Muslim world. The Khwārezmian Turks, pushed south
and west by the Mongols, had upset the power balance and
gained the support of Egypt. After the 10 years’ peace had
expired in 1239, the Muslims easily took back the defenseless
Jerusalem. The Crusades of 1239 to 1241, under Thibaut IV of
Champagne and Richard of Cornwall, brought about the return
of the city as well as other lost territories through negotiation.
However, in 1244 an alliance of Jerusalem and Damascus failed
to prevent the capture and sack of Jerusalem by Khwārezmians
with Egyptian aid. All the diplomatic gains of the preceding
years were lost. Once again the Christians were confined to a
thin strip of ports along the Mediterranean coast.
The Crusades of St. Louis
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© Photos.com/Thinkstock
© Photos.com/Thinkstock
In June 1245, a year after the final loss of Jerusalem, Pope
Innocent IV opened a great ecclesiastical council at Lyons.
Although urgent appeals for help had come from the East, it is
unlikely that the Crusade was uppermost in the pope’s mind, for
a combination of crises confronted the church: numerous
complaints of clerical abuses, increasing troubles with Frederick
II in Italy, and the advance of the Mongols into eastern Europe.
Nevertheless, when King Louis IX of France announced his
intention to lead a new Crusade, the pope gave it his support and
authorized the customary levy on clerical incomes.
As a Crusader, Louis (who would be canonized in 1297) was the
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antithesis of Frederick. Possessed of a rare combination of
religious devotion, firmness as a ruler, and bravery as a warrior,
he seemed the very ideal of the Crusader. He was beloved by his
subjects and respected abroad. He ardently believed the Crusade
to be God’s work, and he was far from sympathetic to the
pope’s use of Crusade propaganda against the emperor.
It was three years before Louis was ready to embark. Peace had
to be arranged with England, transport had to be provided by
Genoa and Marseilles, and funds had to be raised. When the
king embarked in August 1248, he was accompanied by his
queen; his brothers Robert of Artois and Charles of Anjou;
many distinguished French nobles, including Jean, sire de
Joinville, author of The Life of St. Louis (1309); and a small
English contingent. His army was a formidable one, numbering
perhaps 15,000. France was left in the experienced hands of the
queen mother, Blanche of Castile.
The Crusade arrived at Cyprus in September, and it was again
decided to attack Egypt. Since a winter campaign was not
feasible and Louis rejected the suggestion that he attempt
negotiations, it was not until May 1249 that an expedition of
some 120 large and many smaller vessels got under way.
Fortune favoured them at first, and Damietta was again in
Christian hands by June. Shortly afterward the army was
strengthened by the arrival of Louis’s third brother, Alphonse of
Poitiers. Sultan al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb’s death was followed by
confusion in Cairo, which, after some argument, had become the
Crusaders’ objective. In February 1250 Robert of Artois led a
surprise attack on the Egyptian camp 2 miles (3 km) from AlManṣūrah, but, rejecting the advice of more-experienced
campaigners and acting impetuously, he was trapped within the
city. Many knights lost their lives. Louis soon arrived with the
main army and won another victory, albeit a costly one, near AlManṣūrah. It was the last Crusader success.
Meanwhile, Tūrān-Shāh, the sultan’s son, had returned from
Diyarbakır (now in Turkey) to Cairo and temporarily dominated
dissident factions there. Frankish supply ships from Damietta
were intercepted, and before long the Crusaders were suffering
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from famine and disease. Louis, reluctant to abandon a work to
which he had dedicated his very kingdom, perhaps delayed too
long before ordering a retreat. Refusing the pleas of others to
protect himself by fleeing, he remained to lead his soldiers and
was captured with many of them as the Muslim forces closed in.
The king and nobles were held for ransom, but many nonnoble
captives were killed. The queen, who had just given birth to a
son sorrowfully named John Tristan, managed with great
courage to secure sufficient food and to persuade the Genoese
and Pisans not to evacuate Damietta until it could be ceded
formally by treaty and the king’s ransom arranged. On May 6,
1250, the king was released, and Damietta surrendered.
Despite the pleadings of his advisers, Louis did not return home
immediately. He felt bound in conscience to negotiate the
release of as many prisoners as possible, and he also improved
the defenses of the kingdom by strengthening a number of
fortifications before he left in April 1254. Thus, he atoned in
some small measure for the failure of the Crusade and returned
to France, determined to lead a life as a Christian king worthy of
rescuing Jerusalem one day.
During these same years a group of Mongols under Hülegü
overran Mesopotamia and in 1258 took Baghdad, thus ending
the venerable ʿAbbāsid caliphate. In 1260 the Mamlūks of
Egypt, a new dynasty that had arisen from the leaders of former
slave bodyguards of the sultan, defeated the Mongols at ʿAyn
Jālūd in Syria and halted their southward advance. The Muslim
states of Syria were caught in the middle, and the Latin states
were in grave danger. King Hayton of Armenia and his son-inlaw Bohemond VI of Antioch-Tripoli allied themselves with the
Mongols. But the barons at Acre were still more disposed to
dealing with the Muslims, whom they knew, than with the
terrifying and unknown Mongols.
In 1260, after murdering his predecessor, Baybars became sultan
of Egypt. Though this famous Mamlūk sultan did not live to see
the fall of the Latin states (he died in 1277), he had reduced
them to a few coastal outposts. Baybars was ruthless, utterly
lacking the generous chivalry that the Crusaders had admired in
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Saladin. Most of his conquests were followed by a general
massacre of the inhabitants, often including the native
Christians, especially when they had been in league with the
Mongols. In 1265 he took Caesarea, Haifa, and Arsuf. The
following year he conquered Galilee and devastated Cilician
Armenia. In 1268 Antioch was taken and all the inhabitants
slaughtered. The great Hospitaller fortress of Krak des
Chevaliers fell three years later.
These disasters again brought pleas for aid from the West. King
Louis once again took up the cross, but his second venture, the
Eighth Crusade, never reached the East. The expedition instead
went to Tunis, probably because of the influence of Louis’s
brother Charles of Anjou, who had recently been named by the
papacy as the successor to the Hohenstaufens in Sicily. In 1268
he defeated Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen line, and he
was soon involved in grandiose Mediterranean projects, which
ultimately included even Byzantium.
Louis’s new Crusade embarked from southern France in July
1270. Soon after the French landed in North Africa, disease
struck the troops and claimed the lives of both Louis and his son
John Tristan. Charles arrived with the Sicilian fleet in time to
bargain for an indemnity to evacuate the remnants of the army.
Thus, the Crusade ended in tragedy and brought no help to the
East. Nevertheless, despite two failures, Louis IX became for all
Christians the model of the selfless warrior of Christ. Although
the expansion of Muslim power seemed increasingly
unstoppable, Europeans continued to embrace the idea of the
Crusades and to pray for their success.
The final loss of the Crusader states
By the end of the 13th century, Crusading had become more
expensive. The time had passed when a Crusade army was made
up of knights who served under a lord and paid their own way.
Economic pressures caused many nobles to seek royal service.
Royal armies, therefore, became more professional, and many
knights as well as foot soldiers served for pay. Moreover, the
rise of royal authority meant that great Crusades could no longer
be cobbled together by feudal lords but were increasingly reliant
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on kings, who were by their nature easily distracted by events at
home.
In the East chronic divisions, similar to those in Europe, were a
major cause of the Crusader kingdom’s downfall. From the time
of Frederick II, the kingdom had been governed by absentee
rulers; the Hohenstaufens were represented in the East at first by
agents, after 1243 by regents of the Jerusalem dynasty chosen
by the high court of barons. In 1268, on the death of the last
Hohenstaufen, the crown was given to Hugh III of Cyprus, who
returned to the island in 1276 thoroughly frustrated. Then in
1277 Charles of Anjou, as part of his attempt to create a
Mediterranean-wide empire and with papal approval, bought the
rights of the nearest claimant and sent his representative.
Finally, after Charles’s death in 1285, the barons once again
chose a native ruler, Henry II of Cyprus.
Successive regents had failed to control the Jerusalem baronage,
and this ultimately resulted in the disintegration of the entire
structure of Outremer into separate parts. Antioch-Tripoli before
its fall had been increasingly aloof and through intermarriage
closely tied to Armenia. In Acre, the seat of government of the
kingdom, there was a commune of barons and bourgeois.
Immigration had ceased, and the barons were now reduced in
numbers as old families had died out. Some resided in Cyprus,
and others were nominal lords in Palestine of fiefs actually
under Muslim control. The military orders, habitually in
conflict, were virtually distinct entities with extensive
connections in Europe. The bourgeois population had also
considerably altered in composition during the 13th century.
Many criminals and other undesirables had found their way to
Acre. More important, the earlier French predominance in the
region had given way to an Italian one. But the Italians of
Outremer were as divided as they were in Italy. The GenoeseVenetian rivalry extended to the Levant and occasionally, as in
Acre in 1256, resulted in outright war.
The papacy’s concern for Outremer was not confined to efforts
to enlist military aid. Papal financial support was continuous,
and the popes exchanged diplomatic envoys with Eastern rulers,
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both Muslim and Mongol. Furthermore, the 13th-century
patriarchs of Jerusalem, commonly named by the pope, were
also papal legates. But no absentee king, pope, or patriarchlegate could bring to the Latin East the unity necessary for its
survival.
The death of Baybars in 1277, therefore, brought only
temporary respite for the Crusaders, who remained divided and
isolated. In 1280 they again failed to join the Mongols, whom
Sultan Qalāʾūn defeated in 1281. The ineffectiveness of the
Jerusalem administration was becoming apparent even to
Easterners, and the Il-Khan Abagha, the Mongol leader in Iran,
sent his deputy Rabban Sauma to the kings of Europe and the
pope to seek an alliance. The effort was fruitless. Tripoli fell in
1289, and Acre, the last Crusader stronghold on the mainland,
was besieged in 1291. After a desperate and heroic defense, the
city was taken by the Mamlūks, and the inhabitants who
survived the massacres were enslaved. Acre and all the castles
along the Mediterranean coast were systematically destroyed.
A growing sense of their isolation may have been the reason that
the Franks of the 13th century did not develop further the
distinctive culture of their predecessors. The remarkable palace
of the Ibelins in Beirut, built early in the century, boasted
Byzantine mosaics. But, partly because of King Louis’s fouryear stay in the kingdom, remains of churches and castles
indicate a close following of adherence to French Gothic
architectural style. Literary tastes were also distinctly French,
and the production of manuscripts followed French traditions.
At the coronation festivities for Henry II in 1286, in total
disregard—or perhaps in chivalrous defiance—of the ruin
surrounding them, the nobles amused themselves by acting out
the romances of Lancelot and Tristan.
The greatest cultural achievement of the Second Kingdom was
the collection of legal treatises, the Assizes of Jerusalem. The
sections that were compiled in the middle years of the century
and, therefore, in the atmosphere of the wars against the agents
of Frederick II constitute a veritable charter of baronial rights. In
fact, two of the authors were members of the Ibelin family, and
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a third, Philip of Novara, was a close associate. These sections
indicate a shift from the earlier Book of the King, which more
nearly reflects the attitudes of the 12th century. Nevertheless,
the Assizes belong to medieval Europe’s legal renaissance.
The later Crusades
Europe was dismayed by the disaster of 1291. Pope Nicholas IV
had tried to organize aid beforehand, and he and his successors
continued to do so afterward, but without success. France,
which had always been the main bulwark of the Crusades, was
in serious conflict with England, which led to the outbreak of
the Hundred Years’ War in 1337. Moreover, the continued
decline of papal authority and rise of royal power meant that
most of Europe’s warriors were busy at home. The best that the
church could do was to organize smaller Crusade expeditions
with very limited goals.
Courtesy of the John Work Garrett Library, Johns Hopkins
University; photograph ...
Courtesy of the John Work Garrett Library, Johns Hopkins University; photograph Walters
Art Gallery, Baltimore
In the East the military orders could no longer offer a standing
nucleus of troops. In 1308 the Hospitallers took Rhodes and
established their headquarters there. In 1344, with some
assistance, they occupied Smyrna, which they held until 1402.
Meanwhile, the Teutonic Knights had moved their operations to
the Baltic area. The Templars were less fortunate. In 1308 the
French Templars were arrested by Philip IV, and in 1312 the
order was suppressed by Pope Clement V. Finally, in 1314,
Jacques de Molay, the order’s last grand master, was burned at
the stake.
It is not surprising, therefore, that papal calls to Crusade were
answered largely in the form of Crusade theories. For some
59
years after 1291, various projects were proposed, all designed to
avoid previous mistakes and explore new tactics. In 1305 the
Franciscan missionary Ramon Llull, for example, in his Liber de
fine (“Book of the End”), suggested a campaign of informed
preaching as well as military force. At the beginning of the 14th
century, Pierre Dubois submitted a detailed scheme for a
Crusade to be directed by Philip IV of France, and in 1321
Marino Sanudo, in his Secreta fidelium crucis (“Secrets of the
Faithful of the Cross”), produced an elaborate plan for an
economic blockade of Egypt. But none of these or any other
such schemes was put into effect.
King Peter I of Cyprus finally organized an expedition that in
1365 succeeded in the temporary occupation of Alexandria.
After a horrible sack and massacre, the unruly Crusaders
returned to Cyprus with immense booty. Peter planned to return,
but no European aid was forthcoming, and after his murder in
1369 a peace treaty was signed.
With the failure of all attempts to regain a foothold on the
mainland, Cyprus remained the sole Crusader outpost, and after
1291 it was faced with a serious refugee problem. It was in
Cyprus that many of the institutions established by the Franks
survived. Although Jerusalem and Cyprus normally had separate
governments, through intermarriage and the exigencies of
diplomacy, the histories of the two had become interwoven.
Regents of one were often chosen from among relatives in the
other. It has been noted that many Jerusalem barons resided in
Cyprus. With suitable modifications, the Assizes of Jerusalem
applied on the island, and on the mainland the French character
of the Cypriot Latins is evident in the remains of Gothic
structures.
In one respect Cyprus did differ from the mainland. Whereas the
First Kingdom had established a modus vivendi with its native
population, such was not the case in the island kingdom. Many
Greek landholders had fled, and those who remained suffered a
loss of status. All Greeks resisted the Latinizing efforts of the
early 13th-century popes and their representatives. Innocent IV
was more flexible, but tension persisted until the Turkish
60
conquest in the 16th century.
As the Ottoman Turks expanded their power in the Levant, they
took an increasingly larger role in Byzantine politics. During a
civil war in 1348, Emperor John Cantacuzenus allowed the
Turks to cross the Dardanelles into Greece. The gates to Europe,
so long defended by Constantinople, were now opened to a
powerful Muslim empire, and waves of Turks crossed over. By
the end of the 14th century, they had conquered all of Bulgaria
and most of Greece and had surrounded Constantinople. The
rapid expansion of the Turks into Christian Europe changed the
nature of the Eastern Crusades. No longer aimed at conquering
faraway Palestine, they became desperate attempts to defend
Europe itself.
One of the greatest efforts to repulse the Turkish advance was
the Crusade of Nicopolis. Prompted by a plea from King
Sigismund of Hungary in 1395, the Crusade was joined by
powerful Burgundian and German armies who rendezvoused at
Buda the following year. Although it was one of the largest
Crusading forces ever assembled, it was crushed utterly by the
army of Sultan Bayezid I. Hungary was left virtually
defenseless, and the smashing defeat of the Crusade of
Nicopolis led many to fear that all of Europe would soon
succumb to the Muslim advance.
Shorn of its empire, Constantinople continued to hold out
against the Turks, but it could not do so for long without aid.
Emperor John VIII, the patriarch of Constantinople, and
members of the Greek clergy traveled to the West in 1437 to
attend the Council of Florence. The disputes that had separated
the Latin and Greek churches were frankly debated at the
council. The Latin side won out, however, because the Greeks
desperately needed Western help to save Constantinople. Even
though the emperor and patriarch accepted papal primacy and
the reunification of the churches was solemnly declared, the
Greek people refused to accept submission to Rome.
Shortly after the Council of Florence, Pope Eugenius IV
organized a Crusade to relieve Constantinople. Recruits mainly
from Poland, Walachia, and Hungary joined the so-called
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Crusade of Varna, which was led by Hunyadi János, the ruler of
Transylvania, and King Władysław III of Poland and Hungary.
In 1444 the force of some 20,000 men entered Serbia and
captured Niš. Sultan Murad II offered Hungary a 10-year truce,
which was ultimately refused. He then led his forces to Varna in
Bulgaria, which the Crusaders were in the process of besieging,
and destroyed the Christian army. The king of Hungary and the
papal legate were killed in the carnage. Nine years later
Constantinople at last fell to the Ottoman Turks. Riding
triumphantly into the city, Sultan Mehmed II made it clear that
he was determined to conquer Rome as well.
Mehmed almost made good on that threat. In 1480 he launched
two major offensives against the Christians. The first, a massive
siege of the Hospitallers on Rhodes, failed. The second, an
invasion of Italy, met with more success. The city of Otranto
was captured, which provided the Turks with a strategic
beachhead on the peninsula. Panic broke out in Rome as people
packed their bags and prepared to flee the city. Pope Sixtus IV
issued a call for a Crusade to defend Italy, but only Italians took
an interest. Fate stepped in, however, when the sultan died on
May 3, 1481. Turkish attention shifted to a power struggle for
the throne, and thus allowed a papal fleet to recapture Otranto.
Only in Spain did Crusades meet with regular success. The
unification of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella
in 1479 gave Christian knights the opportunity to take up the
cross against the remaining Muslims in Iberia. The campaigns
continued throughout the 1480s and led to the surrender of
Grenada, the last Muslim stronghold, on January 12, 1492.
Nearly 800 years after the first effort to expel the Muslims, the
Reconquista was completed, and Christians across Europe rang
church bells and marched in processions of thanksgiving.
Crusading came to an end in the 16th century, mainly because of
changes in Europe brought on by the Protestant Reformation
and not because the Muslim threat had diminished. Martin
Luther and other Protestants had no use for Crusades, which
they believed were cynical ploys by the papacy to grab power
from secular lords. Protestants also rejected the doctrine of
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indulgence, central to the idea of Crusade. Despite the decline in
the appeal of Crusading, the popes continued to call for peace in
Europe so that Crusades could be launched against the Turks,
and they often financed such wars in holy leagues with various
states such as Venice or Spain. One holy league won a dramatic
victory against the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto in 1571. The Battle
of Lepanto, although not militarily decisive, did give new hope
to Europeans, who saw for the first time that it was indeed
possible to defeat the Turks.
A few last vestiges of the Crusading movement, however,
survived its demise. The Hospitallers, ejected from Rhodes by
Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent in 1522, moved to the island
of Malta, where they continued to take part in holy leagues.
They also remained true to their mission to care for the poor and
sick and built a great hospital at Valletta on Malta that attracted
patients from across Europe. The Hospitallers retained the island
until 1798, when Napoleon expelled them. They then moved to
Rome, where they became a government-in-exile. Known today
as the Knights of Malta, they still issue passports and are
recognized as a sovereign state by some countries. More
important, around the world they continue to devote themselves
to the care of the poor and sick.
The Teutonic Knights declined after they were defeated by
Poland and Lithuania in 1410. In 1525 the grand master, under
Protestant influence, dissolved the order in Prussia and took
personal control of its lands as a vassal of the king of Poland.
The order was officially dissolved in 1809. The Austrian
emperor reestablished the Teutonic Order as a religious
institution in 1834, headquartering it in Vienna, where it
remains today doing charitable work and caring for the sick.
The results of the Crusades
The entire structure of European society changed during the
12th and 13th centuries, and there was a time when this change
was attributed largely to the Crusades. Historians now, however,
tend to view the Crusades as only one, albeit significant, factor
in Europe’s development. It is likely that the disappearance of
old families and the appearance of new ones can be traced in
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part to the Crusades, but generalizations must be made with
caution. It should, moreover, be remembered that, while some
Crusaders sold or mortgaged their property, usually to
ecclesiastical foundations, others bequeathed it to relatives. The
loss of life was without doubt considerable; many Crusaders,
however, did return to their homes.
The sectors acquired by burgeoning Italian cities in the Crusader
states enabled them to extend their trade with the Muslim world
and led to the establishment of trade depots beyond the Crusade
frontiers, some of which lasted long after 1291. The
transportation they provided was significant in the development
of shipbuilding techniques. Italian banking facilities became
indispensable to popes and kings. Catalans and Provençals also
profited, and, indirectly, so did all of Europe. Moreover,
returning Crusaders brought new tastes and increased the
demand for spices, Oriental textiles, and other exotic fare. But
such demands can also be attributed to changing lifestyles and
commercial growth in Europe itself.
The establishment of the Franciscan and Dominican friars in the
East during the 13th century made possible the promotion of
missions within the Crusade area and beyond. Papal bulls
granted special facilities to missionary friars, and popes sent
letters to Asian rulers soliciting permission for the friars to carry
on their work. Often the friars accompanied or followed Italian
merchants, and, since the Mongols were generally tolerant of
religious propaganda, missions were established in Iran, the
Asian interior, and even China. But, since Islamic law rigidly
prohibited propaganda and punished apostasy with death,
conversions from Islam were few. The Dominican William of
Tripoli had some success, presumably within the Crusaders’
area; he and his colleague Riccoldo di Monte Croce both wrote
perceptive treatises on Islamic faith and law. Other missionaries
usually failed, and many suffered martyrdom. In the 14th
century the Franciscans were finally permitted to reside in
Palestine as caretakers for the holy places but not as
missionaries.
The Crusades, especially the Fourth, so embittered the Greeks
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that any real reunion of the Eastern and Western churches was,
as a result, out of the question. Nonetheless, certain groups of
Eastern Christians came to recognize the authority of the pope,
and they were usually permitted to retain the use of their own
liturgies. Although the majority of the missions that grew out of
the Crusades collapsed with the advance of the Ottoman Turks
in the Middle East in the mid-14th century, some of the contacts
that the Western church had made with its Eastern brethren
remained.
Unlike Sicily and Spain, the Latin East did not, it seems,
provide an avenue for the transmission of Arabic science and
philosophy to the West. But the Crusades did have a marked
impact on the development of Western historical literature.
From the beginning there was a proliferation of chronicles,
eyewitness accounts, and later more ambitious histories, in verse
and in prose, in the vernacular as well as in Latin.
There can be little doubt that the Crusades slowed the advance
of Islamic power, although how much is an open question. At
the very least, they bought Europe some much-needed time.
Without centuries of Crusading effort, it is difficult to see how
western Europe could have escaped conquest by Muslim armies,
which had already captured the rest of the Mediterranean world.
Thomas F. Madden
Marshall W. Baldwin
Crusade as metaphor
One of the most enduring though least-discussed results of the
Crusades was the development of the word crusade (which first
appeared in its Latin form in the late 12th or early 13th century)
to denote any common endeavour in a worthy cause. The
transformation of the idea of the Crusades from religio-military
campaigns into modern metaphors for idealistic, zealous, and
demanding struggles to advance the good (“crusades for”) and
to oppose perceived evil (“crusades against”) occurred over
several centuries and represents the culmination of a movement
that began in the late 11th century. By the early 12th century,
historiography was already contributing to the idea of Crusade
as armed pilgrimage or holy war, which Bernard of Clairvaux in
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the mid-12th century and Pope Innocent III in the early 13th
continued to elaborate. Receptive to chivalric as well as
Christian ideals, Crusade ideology proved more durable than the
stinging criticisms provoked by successive military defeats,
culminating in the loss of the Holy Land in 1291.
The intermittent continuation of the movement during the later
Middle Ages led to proposals for new Crusades. Some were
grounded in strategic realities, others in Utopian or prophetic
aspirations, which emphasized certain moral or political
prerequisites as essential to regaining Jerusalem. European
intellectuals thus began to reinvent the Crusades. In the early
14th century, Pierre Dubois devised a plan for the French king
to seize control of Christendom from the pope and lead a
victorious Crusade. Christopher Columbus imagined that a
messianic Spanish ascendancy would reconquer Constantinople,
then Jerusalem. Viewed as a solution to the woes of Europe,
proposals for Crusades against the Ottoman Turks continued to
be put forward from the Reformation to the age of Louis XIV.
Continuing interest in the Crusades meant that they never
disappeared from public consciousness. During the
Enlightenment, when medieval Crusading was perceived as
irrational fanaticism, and in the Romantic era, when the
Crusades were seen as an adornment of the faith and an
embodiment of chivalry, the Crusades never ceased to attract the
attention of historians, poets, novelists, composers, and
encyclopaedists. Accordingly, the emergence of the Crusade
metaphor by the latter half of the 18th century implies at least
some knowledge of the historical Crusades. English dictionaries
were slow to register the change, however. Neither the
Dictionary of Samuel Johnson (1755) nor that of Noah Webster
(1828, rev. 1845) includes a metaphoric definition of crusade.
Anticipating later lexicographers, however, a future president of
the United States was already using the Crusade metaphor in
1786. Writing to jurist George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson urged,
“Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and
improve the law for educating the common people.” The source
of Jefferson’s positive use of the Crusade metaphor—to which
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Americans have ever since remained faithful—remains
uncertain. Although he had histories of the Crusades by Louis
Maimbourg (1682) and Voltaire (1756) in his well-stocked
library, Jefferson would not have been inspired by these works,
because of their negative attitude toward the Crusades. MarieJean-Antoine-Nicholas de Caritat Condorcet’s progressivist
interpretation of the Crusades in his Esquisse d’un tableau
historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1795; Sketch for a
Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind)
postdates Jefferson’s metaphor and cannot have been the
inspiration. Whatever the origin of Jefferson’s usage, the
Crusade metaphor had become so well established in American
usage by 1861 that E.G. de Fontaine was able to deploy it
ironically against his enemies, the abolitionists, who, he
sneered, “invited all men to join in the holy crusade” against
slavery.
The titles of 20th-century English-language books demonstrate
just how popular Crusade metaphors would become,
encompassing crusades against tuberculosis, drink, crime,
capital punishment, drug abuse, poverty, slavery, and terrorism,
along with crusades for justice, education, total freedom,
humanity, women’s rights, and the environment. The metaphor
was used by both sides in the Spanish Civil War and has also
been applied to Billy Graham’s campaign of evangelism. It also
has been used to describe various U.S. government domestic
and foreign policy initiatives. But perhaps the best-known use of
the metaphor in the 20th century was by Dwight D. Eisenhower,
whose 1948 memoir of World War II, Crusade in Europe,
applied the term to the great struggle against the Nazis.
Metaphors empower language and thought; they also risk
oversimplifying and distorting historical truth and trivializing
their subject through repetition. Moreover, metaphors are
culturally specific and often convey value judgments. While
modern historians attempt to understand the Crusades by
placing them in the context of medieval religion, culture, and
society, popular metaphoric usage dehistoricizes the Crusades
into ongoing, eternal, yet contemporary conflicts of good versus
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evil—against AIDS, drugs, poverty, terrorism, and so on.
American crusades have been exclusively metaphoric, and
nearly always, from Jefferson’s day to the present, they have
carried positive connotations. For Arabs and Muslims, however,
the Crusades have highly negative associations of medieval
Christian aggression and modern Western imperialism and
colonialism. In other words, the ultimate power, significance,
and meaning of Crusade and its usefulness as a metaphor
depend, in the end, on one’s cultural heritage and point of view.
Gary Dickson
___________________________________________________
Additional Reading
General works
• A good bibliographic introduction to work on the Crusades,
including sources, secondary studies, and journal articles,
is found in H.E. Mayer and Joyce McLellan, “Select
Bibliography of the Crusades,” in Kenneth M. Setton (ed.),
A History of the Crusades, vol. 6 (1989), pp. 511–664. The
best full-scale treatments of the Crusades in English are
Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vol.
(1951–54); Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short
History (1987); H.E. Mayer, The Crusades, 2nd ed.
(1988); Jean Richard, The Crusades (1999); and Thomas
F. Madden, A Concise History of the Crusades (1999). The
long-neglected Muslim side of the story is examined by
Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives
(2000). A multivolume collection, Kenneth M. Setton
(ed.), A History of the Crusades, 2nd ed. (1969–89), is a
cooperative work by a number of historians on a host of
topics.
Useful selections of sources in English translation
are James A. Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary
Survey (1962); Francesco Gabrieli (compiler), Arab
Historians of the Crusades (1969, reissued 1992;
originally published in Italian, 1957); Régine Pernoud, The
Crusades (1962; originally published in French, 1960);
and Louise Riley-Smith and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The
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Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (1981).
Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries
• The idea of Crusade is explored in Carl Erdmann, The Origin
of the Idea of Crusade (1977; originally published in
German, 1935), a classic in the history of the Crusades.
Interpretations and factors are discussed in Paul
Alphandéry, La Chrétienté et l’idée de croisade, 2 vol.
(1954–59); James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and
the Crusader (1969); and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First
Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986).
The best
works on the First Crusade are Riley-Smith’s work cited
above, as well as his The First Crusaders, 1095–1131
(1997). Studies that illuminate other factors in the Crusade
are John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of
the First Crusade (1994); and Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety
and the Lay Response to the First Crusade (1993). The
attacks on the Jews during the First Crusade are discussed
in Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade
(1987, reissued 1996), and In the Year 1096: The First
Crusade and the Jews (1996). A useful treatment of the
Third Crusade can be found in John Gillingham, Richard I
(1999).
Crusader states
• There are many excellent studies on the history of the
Crusader states. Among these are Dana C. Munro, The
Kingdom of the Crusaders (1935, reprinted 1966); John L.
LaMonte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem, 1100 to 1291 (1932, reprinted 1970); Jean
Richard, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2 vol. (1979;
originally published in French, 1953); Joshua Prawer, The
Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the
Middle Ages (1973); Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Byzantium and
the Crusader States, 1096–1204 (1993); Jonathan Phillips,
Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations Between the Latin
East and the West, 1119-1187 (1996); Ronnie Ellenblum,
Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem (1998); and Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King
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and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of
Jerusalem (2000).
Crusades in the 13th century
• The Fourth Crusade is described by Donald E. Queller and
Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of
Constantinople, 2nd ed. (1997); and, from the Byzantine
perspective, in Charles M. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the
West, 1180–04 (1968). The Fifth Crusade is discussed in
James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221
(1986); and the older but still useful Joseph P. Donovan,
Pelagius and the Fifth Crusade (1950). The best treatment
of the Crusades of St. Louis can be found in Jean Richard,
Saint Louis: Crusader King of France (1992). William
Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade
(1979), places the two Crusades within the framework of
Louis’s reign.
Later Crusades
• The single best resource for the later Crusades is Kenneth M.
Setton’s magisterial The Papacy and the Levant (1204–
1571), 4 vol. (1976–84). Also important are Norman
Housley, The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades, 1305–
1378 (1986), and The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From
Lyons to Alcazar (1992).
Crusades in the West
• The Spanish Reconquista is covered in Derek W. Lomax, The
Reconquest of Spain (1978); and Bernard F. Reilly, The
Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain, 1031–1157
(1992). The best work on the Albigensian Crusade is
Joseph R. Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades, with a new
epilogue by Carol Lansing (1992).
Special topics
• Military histories of the Latin East are available in R.C. Smail,
Crusading Warfare, 1097–1193, 2nd ed. (1995); and
Christopher Marshall, Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–
1291 (1992). Art and architecture of the Latin East are
discussed by T.S.R. Boase, Kingdoms and Strongholds of
the Crusaders (1971); Hugh Kennedy, Crusader Castles
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(1994); and Jaroslav Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the
Holy Land (1995). Histories of the military orders are
discussed in Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A
History of the Order of the Temple (1994); Jonathan RileySmith, The Knights of St. John in Jerusalem and Cyprus,
c. 1050–1310 (1967); and Eric Christiansen, The Northern
Crusades: The Baltic and Catholic Frontier, 1100–1525,
2nd ed. (1997).
Thomas F. Madden
Marshall W. Baldwin
EB Editors
Crusade as metaphor
• The history of the metaphoric use of the term crusade is
addressed in several works cited above. Other useful
studies are Paul Rousset, Histoire d’une idéologie, la
Croisade (1983); Giles Constable, “The Historiography of
the Crusades,” in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz
Mottahedeh (eds.), The Crusades from the Perspective of
Byzantium and the Muslim World (2001); and James A.
Brundage (ed.), The Crusades: Motives and Achievements
(1964). A thoughtful introduction to the use of metaphor is
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
(1980).
Gary Dickson
__________________________________________________
Resources:
Crusades
Britannica School, Encyclopedia Britannica
Retrieved from:
http://school.eb.co.uk/levels/advanced/article/110241
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