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An Introduction to the First Crusade
Author(s): Claude Cahen
Source: Past & Present, No. 6 (Nov., 1954), pp. 6-30
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/649812
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6
PAST AND PRESENT
An Introduction to the First Crusade
THE SUBJECT OF THE CRUSADESIS ONE THAT HAS FASCINATEDVERY
many writers in the past, and still continues to attract apologists
of all persuasions, not only religious, but political, and social.
Nevertheless the more that is written, the less there seems to be of
value to the scientific historian. It cannot be denied that some of
the literature is very erudite, and that many of the authors have
tried to look at things from a new point of view. In spite of this
the popular textbooks continue to serve up the same traditional
errors, while learned works, besides suffering from weaknesses due
to the contemporary outlook on history, suffer also from certain
inherent difficulties. The Crusades belong to the history of both
West and East, and it is difficult for a historian to be an expert in
both. This short article does not pretend to provide even a plan
for a comprehensive study of the whole subject. All that I shall
attempt will be to examine the particular question of the First
Crusade, giving an outline of the progress recently made in research,
and suggesting desirable lines of further study.
For nine and a half centuries, the textbooks have repeated, almost
word for word, with mechanical regularity, that the cause, or at
least the immediate cause, of the Crusades was the Turkish conquest
of the Near East, which they say constituted a very real threat to
Christendom, that had to be countered by military action. Looking
at the Turks in the light of the later history of the Ottoman Empire,
historians have supposed them to have been always an intolerant
race. As a first step this traditional view must be considerably
modified.
In IO095 many Christian peoples and the Holy Land itself had
already been subject to the Moslems for four and a half centuries,
and yet there had been no Crusade. Islam, in its attitude towards
unbelievers had from the first been faithful to two distinct principles,
on the one hand that the believer was bound by his faith to the duty
of the jihad, the Holy War, whose aim was to bring the unbeliever
into political subjection to Islam, on the other hand that such subjection involved no forced conversion, and the unbeliever, once
relegated to his inferior and subordinate position, enjoyed the
protection of the Moslem Law. Naturally there had been occasional
outbursts of fury. The only serious one had been El-Hakim's
AN INTRODUCTIONTO THE FIRST CRUSADE
7
persecution at the beginning of the XIth century, in Egypt and
Syria. This had made a deep impression in the West, because of
the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre. News of this outrage was
carried home by returning pilgrims. But El-Hakim was mad,
and the persecution was never resumed after his death. In spite
of this there continued to be numerous conversions to Islam: the
material and moral advantages of conforming to the religion of the
ruling power were obvious enough to account for them without
the need of any other pressure. Nevertheless in Palestine and
Syria it is probable that Christians remained at the end of the XIth
century as numerous as Moslems, and in some places, like the
Lebanon, much more numerous; their life was no different after the
Turkish conquerors came from what it had been ever since the
Arab conquest in the VIIth century.
As for the jihad, long before the Turkish conquest it had lost
the character of a great offensive and a serious bid for conquest
that it had had in the first generations after the death of Mohammed.
Since the VIIIth century it had only existed as a series of almost
routine forays, becoming more and more infrequent, which were
launched against the frontier territories of the enemy for the sake of
booty, with no idea of conquest. Even in this form the Holy War
became fainter and fainter; it had real interest only for the soldiers
on the frontiers, and was a matter of complete indifference to the
Moslem population in the heart of Islam. Indeed the frontiersmen,
both on the Moslem and on the Infidel side, were often military
colonists only loosely attached to their central governments, and
between raids they fraternised with each other in complete indifference
to frontiers and religious differences. Armenia and Spain provided
remarkable examples of such co-existence.
It is true that in the middle of the Xth century there was a revival
in the East of the idea of the Holy War. The initiative was
Byzantine. Taking advantage of a temporary political break-down
in the Moslem world, the Byzantine emperors had taken the
offensive to recover those parts of eastern Asia Minor and northern
Syria which had been lost to the Moslems three centuries earlier.
The Hamdanid dynasty of Aleppo, characteristically deserted by the
other Moslem states, was left to face the attack alone. The founder
of that dynasty, Saif ad-Daula, was supported by the Bedouins,
professional marauders, and by the poets, who, imbued with the
herioc spirit of ancient Arab poetry, were the creators or the voice
of public opinion. He had stubbornly resisted the invaders and
sometimes counter-attacked, thereby restoring the tradition of the
8
PAST AND PRESENT
jihad to a place of honour. But this had been but a brief
conflagration. People had become used to Byzantine victories,
and never was there more intrigue or fraternisationbetween Christians
and Moslems against other Christiansand other Moslems than in the
XIth century.
In only two areas did the spirit of the jihad survive, and there it
was directed against pagans, and not Christians: in the Sahara,
amongst the groups of wild and fanatical warriors sheltered by the
ribat, Murabitun(the Almoravides);and in centralAsia, in the region
of the Syr-Daria, the ghdzis, those volunteer champions of the Faith,
a sort of militant religious order who renewed against the Turks
beyond the frontiers the immemorial tradition of the conflict of the
sedentary Iranians with the nomadic " Turanians." It was no
chance co-incidence of time which was to give these men, of the
West and East alike, a new importance in this history of the Moslem
world.
In the XIth century the Moslem West presenteda picture of political
anarchy, and, in the eyes of the teachers of the Law, the theologians
and the jurists, one of depravity and decay. They found it easy to
win over the wild fanatics to a programme of making a " clean
sweep" of this corruption: they appealed to the Almoravides who
conquered a large part of north Africa. In Spain they could not
have succeeded so easily had not circumstances been favourable,
for Spanish society was more cultivated,and opposed to " barbarian"
intervention. The favourable conditions were provided, involuntarily, by the Christians. The war between the Christians in the
North and the Moslems in the South of the Peninsula had been
going on with alternating periods of vigour and relaxationfor three
hundred years, but now, owing to the internal divisions in their
country it was, as far as the Moslems were concerned, almost extinct.
But among the Christians, because of the breakdown of Moslem
unity, it had again resumed its aggressive character. Moreover,
and this is note-worthy, for reasons which will be given later, the
war was no longer waged merely by the Christiansof Spain, who had
formed the habit of combining war with the needs of " peaceful
co-existence," but also by ultramontane warriors, by Frenchmen
who were strangersto such needs, and who thought only of fighting
and pillaging under cover of religious duty. It was to save themselves from this danger that the Spanish Moslems admitted the
Almoravides. Thus by the end of the XIth century Moslem Spain
had recovered its political unity at the price of submitting to the
leadershipof a people animatedby the spirit of war and intolerance.
AN INTRODUCTIONTO THE FIRST CRUSADE
9
A similar development had taken place in the East. There too
the state of the Moslem world, divided politically, socially and
religiously, seemed a scandal to the leaders of orthodoxy. They
therefore looked for an instrument which would restore order to
their own advantage. They found it in the Turks. By that time
the Turks had been effectively converted to Islam. Being recent
converts, zealous and strait-laced, they were easily persuaded of the
necessity for energetic action. Their chiefs, often skilled military
leaders, found here just what they wanted. The ghdzis no longer
opposed the Turks, who were now Moslems. On the contrary the
Turks now became the best recruits of the ghdzzs. Having been
converted to Islam as it was on the frontiers of central Asia, they had
adopted the Islam of the ghazis which so well suited their way of life
and their customary liking for raids. They now had only to divert
these raids against their kinsfolk to the North who were still pagan.
In the outcome almost all Moslem Asia was conquered by the Turks
to the benefit of the ruling Seljukid family. Moreover the Turks
who carriedout this conquest were nomads, Turcomans as they were
called, inspired with the zeal of the ghadzsand impatient to transfer
their activities to all the new frontiers where they had been installed
by the creation of the Seljuk empire.
From the point of view of the relations between Moslems and
Christians, with which we are here concerned, the effect of this
was two-fold. The fate of the Christians who lived inside the
Seljuk empire was unaffected. The Seljukids, heirs of orthodox
Moslem tradition, applied to their non-Moslem subjects the legal
protection afforded by Islam. The Christians outside the Moslem
world were subjected to a renewal of the Holy War of early Islamic
history. The result was a new surge of Moslem expansion which
took advantageof the dissensions among the Byzantines, and robbed
them of almost all Asia Minor - virtuallyhalf of their empire. This
conquest was made almost against the will of the Seljukidswho were
much more concerned with the struggle against the heresies within
the Moslem world than with the subjection of infidels outside it.
They had simply given their head to the Turcomans who would
otherwise have been a source of trouble and disquiet. Used to a
wandering life, impatient of all the restrictions of the central
government and of the rights of privateproperty,still half savageand
accustomed to pillage and blood-shed, the Turcomans were difficult
subjects for any master to control. To incorporate them in Asia
Minor as part of the Seljuk empire would have been a difficult task,
for there was no established Seljuk administration there and the
IO
PAST AND PRESENT
Turks were as yet incapable of instituting one; to do so would have
meant a definitive breach with the Byzantine empire, which to some
extent the Seljukids preferred to have available in order at need to
use its good offices against Turcomans themselves. They therefore
left the Turks to do as they liked in Asia Minor and Byzantium was
impotent to hold them. There ensured a period of cruelty, suffering
and destruction. The vital date is the Byzantinedisasterat Manzikert
(IO7I), where the emperor was taken prisoner.
Undoubtedly for the Byzantine empire this was territorially
disastrous and the occasion of terrible suffering for the Christians
of Asia Minor. Only two reservations must be made: first, the
ravages of the Turcomans had been almost as devastatingin all the
Moslem countries which had resisted them; secondly, while the
state of war long continued on the whole periphery of western
Asia MLinor,elsewhere, once the wave of devastation had passed,
life was reorganised and we are presented with quite a different
picture.
*
*
*
It must be remembered that in the Near East there was not one
but several Christian communities. Within the Byzantine Empire
the official Church comprised the vast majority of believers, subject
to the patriarchate of Constantinople; there were also Christians
of the Greek rite, but for the most part Arab speaking, in Egypt,
Syria and Armenia, who were subject to the patriarchatesof Antioch,
Jerusalem and Alexandria. But there were other Churches, long
separated from Constantinople and Rome: the Maronites of the
Lebanon, separated more de facto than de jure, the Jacobite Monophysites in Syria, Mesopotamia, and the upper Euphrates, the
Coptic Monophysites in Egypt, the Nestorians in Mesopotamia,
Persia and central Asia, and finally the Armenians, who had their
own national Church. All these were Churches of communities
which for centuries had been in opposition to the Greek Church,
less by reason of doctrinal differences, however important such
differences were for the theologians, than by reason of the mutual
jealousies between their independent hierarchies, their established
property rights, and above all of their racial differences. They had
earlier welcomed the Arab conquest as a deliverance from the
domineering and mischief-making Greek Church. The non-Greek
Christians of eastern Asia Minor ha.d found almost insupportable
the restoration of Byzantine authority. The Greek Church in the
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST CRUSADE
II
Xth and XIth centuries had not learnt by experience to be more
tolerant than it had been before the Arab conquest. Therefore
whatever they had suffered from the Turcoman invaders the local
churches were convinced that what the Greeks suffered was well
deserved, and there were even some exceptional cases of native
Christianswho lent a hand to the Turcomans againstthe Greeks.
More generally, there is no doubt that in the period immediately
following the Turkish occupation the native non-Greek Christians
had recovered at the expense of the Greeks the equivalent of what
the momentary devastation of the Turcomans had cost them. Not
only were they free of the religiousand fiscal oppressionof Byzantium,
but also, because the Turcomans had no idea of administration,they
were left alone to run their own.internal affairs. It is also probable
that, on a more purely ecclesiastical level, they inherited churches
which either they had taken from the Greeksor which the Greekshad
abandoned, as we know happened at Antioch. The Armenians
benefited less than the Monophysites, for among the Armenians
there remained a party allied to the Greeks, and even among the
enemies of the Greeksthere were some warriorlords who endeavoured
to carve out for themselves principalities beneath the heights of the
Taurus. But for the Monophysites, who had long lost all political
ambition and all attachment to any foreign power whatever the
benefit was unqualified.
For the Greeks the Turkish conquests were clearly a catastrophe.
Yet its magnitude must not be exaggerated. It is true that the Greek
prelates were suspect in the eyes of the Turks of complicity with
Byzantium. Nevertheless there was no systematic opposition to
their continued residence in the country. Sulaimanibn Kutlumush
(Qutalmish), the conqueror of Asia Minor and Antioch, allowed
the Greek patriarch to continue to reside in that city and did not
even stop him from making visits to Constantinople. Sula'iman,
Moslem as he was, affected to consider himself the lieutenant of the
Basileus. Many Greek bishops, like many of their flocks, fled from
Asia Minor, but more often because of the material difficulties of
existence or the diminution in the number of believers than in
consequence of any proscription. Some prelates stayed, and in any
case, on the lower level, the monks and the priests remained, and
the Greek communion, shrunken it is true, did not disappear.
Gradually the Moslem. state in Asia Minor organised itself and the
situation of Christiansof all rites was much as it was in other Moslem
lands.
In order thoroughly to understand the situation in Palestine it is
12
PAST AND PRESENT
necessaryto bear in mind some facts and dates which even the experts
have not always appreciated. First it must be remembered that
long before the arrivalof the Turks the Bedouins had kept Palestine
in a state of semi-anarchy and insecurity which the Fatimid government had been unable to bring to an end. With the Fatimids, who
represented in the Moslem world the Ismailian heresy which the
Seljuks were pledged to extirpate, the Byzantine Empire maintained
diplomatic relations, and thus they had been able to help the
Christians, particularlythose of the Greek rite, to rebuild the ruins
left by El-Hakim's persecution. In I071 Palestine was conquered
by a Turcoman chief named Atsiz, who was acting on his own account
and not for the Seljukids. In 1079 it was incorporatedin the Seljuk
dominions, forming together with central Syria the appanage of
Prince Tutush; he in his turn in io86 granted it as a fief to another
Turcoman chief, Artuk, who had been long in the Seljukid service;
finally, in 1098, the Fatimids recovered Palestine from Artuk's heirs
after his death.
It is probable that the wiping out of Byzantine influence benefited
the non-Greek Christians at Jerusalem as elsewhere. Atsiz had to
nominate a Christian, a Jacobite, as governor of the Holy City, for
any Moslem he might have appointed would have been suspect of
Fatimid sympathies. In 1076 the Turcoman ruler put down a
revolt of the Moslems in the City with much bloodshed, while
the Christians, who since the repair of the ramparts in the middle
of the XIth century had been segregated in a special quarter, were
unharmed. Even the Greek Patriarch, Symeon, was allowed to live
in the City. The anonymous author of the History of the (Coptic)
Patriarchsof Alexandriapraises Atsiz, which is the more remarkable
because some years later the same author was to complain of the
intolerance of the Crusaders. It was true (he admits) that the
Turcomans denied the miracle of the Sacred Fire which at Easter
every year came down to light a candle in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre, but then in the year when the Franks came, the miracle
never took place at all. Artuk (perhaps)shocked the Christians to
the soul by shooting an arrow into the roof of the Holy Sepulchre,
but that was merely the traditional Turkish way of signifying that
they had taken possession, and not a gesture of religious intolerance.
In all the lands incorporated in the Seljukid Empire, including,
after the fall of Atsiz, Palestine, the situation of the Christians was
perfectly normal. There was perhapsa greaterreluctancethan under
previous regimes to employ non-Moslems as high officials, but that
did not affect the ordinary people and there was nothing systematic
about it. Everybody, Moslems included, complained of the ravages
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST CRUSADE
I3
of the Turcomans. The new Empire was quickly organised. A
chorus of praise for the great Seljukid sultan Malik Shah (IO73-92)
was voiced alike by Moslems and by Christians who had no axes to
grind. His reign symbolised the return of order, security and equal
justice for all. It may be that the Armenian literary style of a
Matthew of Edessa, a Sarcavag or a Stephen Orppelian is inflated
by rhetoric; but the same impression is given by the more measured
prose of the Chronicles of the Jacobite Michael the Syrian and the
Nestorian Amr bar Sliba. It is true that the death (in 1092) of
Malik Shah markedthe beginning of a period of dissensions, but they
injured the people no more than the similar quarrels which had
filled earlier Moslem history, and in any case they were not antiChristianin character. It is well known that the Turks imprisoned
the patriarchJohn of Antioch in 1097, but the Christians,reinforced
by the Byzantines, were then under the walls of the city. Similarly,
when the Crusaderswere approachingJerusalemthe Egyptians drove
several Christian dignitaries into exile, among them Symeon, who
went to Cyprus: but in neither case can this be regardedas more than
a measure of elementaryprudence.
It is an established fact that the non-Greek Christians sent no
appeal to the West, not even to the Papacy. The exchange of letters
between Gregory VII and an Armenian Catholicus (patriarch)
reveals nothing of that sort. Even though the Orientals had met a
considerablenumber of Norman mercenaries,it was difficultfor them
to envisage the dispatch to the East of a real western army, even had
they wished for it. There is nothing to indicate that they had been
complaining of their fate any more than usual or had expressed any
but the traditional desire for deliverance. It is true that the West
had seen Palestinian monks asking alms on behalf of their Church,
seeking to arouse the pity of the faithful, but that was nothing new;
it had long been a practice, more common immediately after the
destructionof the Holy Sepulchre. There are no gounds for thinking
that the Turkish conquest had increased the number of such
mendicants or accentuated the pathetic force of their appeal. It is
noteworthy that when later oriental writers tried to explain the
genesis of the Crusades they never spoke of any sufferings of the
Eastern Christians. Ibn al-Athir cites the aggressive policy of the
N ormans of Italy; another Moslem al-Azimi, and a Christian,
Michael the Syrian, who was particularlysensitive to the concept of
Christianfraternity,only adduce the stories of western pilgrims which
obviously derive from Westernersalreadyestablishedin the East.
*
*
*
I4
PAST AND PRESENT
But what truth is there in these stories of the molestation
of pilgrims ? The pilgrims had the choice of two routes from the
West to Palestine; some crossed the European continent, the
Byzantine empire and Asia Minor; certainly for these the persistence
of Turcoman disorder in Asia Minor was as good as a denial of
passage. But that did not mean a denial of the possibility of
pilgrimage altogether; it was possible to travel by sea, either from
Constantinopleor from Italy. This second route was the one which
Italian merchants had been following for generations. It was
unaffected by the Turkish conquest, which had not reached all the
Syrian ports. Even those which were affected, like Antioch, were
still as much visited by the Venetians and others as before, and
the Venetians were luke-warm supporters of the Crusade. Nothing
then prevented the pilgrims going to Palestine by sea. It may be
that for two or three years the Turcoman disorders had interfered
with Palestine also; but we also know that two pilgrimages had been
disturbed by the Bedouins in 1055 and 1064, that is before the
coming of the Turks; and by about oo80there was certainly greater
security than there had been for a long time. The disappearance
of the semi-protectorate of Byzantium over Jerusalem may have
actually worked in favour of the Latin clergy: at least that is what a
passage in Nicon of the Black Mountain implies, if its dating is to be
relied on. The Amalfitanshad two hospices in Jerusalem,which may
indeed be older than the Turkish conquest, but which certainly
continued to function after it. The truth is that pilgrimages continued as before. It is true that there were none as importantas that
of o1064;it was learnt by experience that a troop of that size excited
the covetousness of the Bedouins. But we know of many cases of
pilgrims reaching Turkish Jerusalem as their fathers had reached
Arab Jerusalem.
They had grievances, it is true, but it must be repeated that most
of them areknown to us only from writingssubsequentto the Crusade,
and that such grievances are adduced as a justificationafter the fact.
Even if we accept them as true, they must be admitted to be merely
laughable. Often they come down to mere acts of petty spite, such
as are always provokedby the close proximity of two hostile religious
communities (Moslems relieving themselves in churches, and so
forth); sometimes they merely reveal that the pilgrims had no conception of the problems of a developed administration. It was
naturalthat they should have found it hard, after a costly journey, to
have to pay a fee to enter the Holy City, but they had had to pay for
the right to cross Byzantine territory; and it is very difficult to regard
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST CRUSADE
I5
this as a mark of intolerance. Even the most galling experience
known to us, that of the pilgrims who for lack of money were unable
to enter the Holy Places, belongs to the period of the pilgrimage of
Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, some sixty years before the appearance
of the Turks in this area.
To sum up: The Turkish invasion of Asia Minor was a disaster
for Byzantine Christendom,with some compensationsfor non-Greek
Christians;to the Christiansof the Moslem countries and of Palestine
in particularit brought temporarysufferings which they shared with
their Moslem neighbours: as these territories became incorporated
in the Seljuk empire, the Christianinhabitantsfound themselves in a
situation very like that which they had always known under Islam.
The pilgrims had been annoyed at having to abandon one traditional
route, but had not been prevented from using another instead, and
were no less welcome in Jerusalemthan before.
This then is the problem: why was it that when the real danger
was to Byzantium, that the Crusadecame to be directed to the rescue
of the Holy Sepulchre which was not in danager? It is clearly a
case of the substitution of motive. The danger which the Crusade
sought to avert was not the real danger.
Naturally in the mind of the average Crusader there was not
substitution but confusion. Monophysites and Greeks, Asia Minor
and Palestine, el-Hakim and Malik Shah, all that for him merged
into a vague picture of the East confused by the dazzling light of the
Cross. He envisaged churches laid waste and pilgrims molested,
as he was told by the propagandists. Much more often it was a matter
of abstract Christian feeling and of the humiliation he felt at the
domination of Islam in the places where the Saviour had lived. But
even if this confusion made the substitution of motives pqssible, it is
not of itself sufficient to explain how that substitution came about.
So there is a second problem: the western world revised everything
it had ever known about Islam; that which before had merely
nourished a passive sense of grievance now became the motive for
action; that which hitherto had been borne with equanimity was now
felt to be intolerable. The explanation of this phenomenon can be
sought in two directions: in Byzantine propagandaor in the situation
in the West.
*
*
*
There was at least one mediaeval author who saw the problem
of substitution. P. Charanis has recently drawn attention to a
passage in a Byzantine chronicler of the early XIIIth century which
I6
PAST AND PRESENT
seems to indicate that it was Alexius Comnenus himself who, knowing
that it was vain to seek reinforcementsfrom the West merely to save
Byzantium, made the central theme of his propaganda the rescue
of the Holy Places. Indeed this theme had already on occasion
been sufficiently useful to Byzantium itself for there to be no need
for its invention now; it had been used when John Tzimisces in
975 led an expedition up to the very walls of the Holy City. But that
had been an exceptional episode. Byzantine policy had been much
more directed to the stabilisation of the frontiers of Asia Minor than
to an eccentric thrust towards Jerusalem, neither is there any reason
to think that the Patriarchateof Constantinople,having already seen
the reincorporation of the Patriarchate of Antioch in the Empire,
was insistent on the acquisition of that of Jerusalem also. The
Byzantine emperors had concerned themselves, without undue haste,
in the rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre, but it cannot be said that
Jerusalem occupied in the mind of eastern Christendom, Greek or
non-Greek, the same place as in that of the West in the XIIth
century; the Greeks did make pilgrimages but, except for those from
the neighbouring provinces, not in any great numbers. In any case
as far as the present problem is concerned it does not seem that the
evidence of the Byzantine chronicler should be given much weight.
It is more than a century later than the events with which it deals
and is chiefly interesting as indicating awarenessof the problem in the
mind of an author known to be otherwise concerned to discover a
basis for France-Byzantine collaboration; but in the last analysis
the Crusade was organised by the Pope, and who will believe that
the Pope confounded Jerusalem and the Byzantine Empire? If
he did in fact connect them, whether it was suggested to him or not,
it was because it seemed good to him to do so, and the reason for it
can only be sought in his own policy and in the situationin the West.
Even so it does not of course follow that there are any grounds for
under-estimating the effect of the appeals of Byzantium for help.
There is no doubt that such appeals were made. But to understand
them there is something else to bear in mind. Since 1054 there had
been an open schism between the Churches of Constantinople and
Rome, a fact which clearly compromised their relations on the
political level also. Recent research however has made possible
a less radical interpretationof the Schism than that which was long
accepted. On the one hand what happened in 1054 was much more
the declarationof a separationwhich had long existed in fact than a
new phenomenon: at the most it was a reaction against the tentative
rapprochementwhich had been provoked by the danger which the
AN INTRODUCTIONTO THE FIRST CRUSADE
I7
Norman expansion in southern Italy in the middle of the XIth
century presented to Constantinopleand Rome alike. On the other
hand, this Schism, which we to-day know has widened and endured,
was not felt except by some extremists to be irremediable; it was
not the first, and it did not, like heresy proper, destroy the feeling of
belonging to the universal Church, which though torn by dissensions,
and with rival hierarchies, yet remained one and the same. Finally
even if the will to schism may have been strong in the Patriarchate
of Constantinople, it was weaker at Antioch, which stood to gain
much less than Constantinople,and it was even weaker at Jerusalem,
where the Patriarch,beyond the Byzantine frontier, had daily to rub
shoulders with Christians of all rites, Latins included. In such
circumstancesthe negotiations for military aid to Byzantiumthrough
Papal mediation took the form on both sides of a spiritual-temporal
bargain: in Byzantium the Emperors, anxious to obtain political
help had to take into considerationthe Pope's opinion, and allowed
the hope to be aroused that re-union would follow military aid;
Rome may have been inclined to make the willingness of the Greeks
to accept religious union the price of persuadingthe western princes
to come to the aid of Byzantium.
In Byzantium for fifteen years the Turks had been regarded only
as pillagers, insufferable it is true, but not a serious danger to the
political integrity of the empire. For reasons of internal politics
the recruitingof the indigenous population had been in part replaced
by the enrolment of foreign mercenaries, especially Normans. But
it had not seemed necessary to make any further effort before the
time of Romanus IV Diogenes (IO68-107I). He alone, and in vain,
had tried to make peace with the Normans in Italy in order to be
free to act against the Turks. After the disaster of Manzikert his
successor, Michael VII, at the price of the total renunciation of
Italy, secured not only peace but an alliance(IO74). In the meantime
he had also tried a rapprochementwith the Pope, but the effort was
wrecked on the religious obstacle, and, it seems, was only actively
pursued in Byzantiumin so far as the Emperordespairedof obtaining
an alliance with the Normans, which would have been far more
immediately useful. Gregory VII, however, who had just become
Pope, had, as we shall see, takenthe question of rescuingthe Byzantine
Empire very much to heart, and had alreadytaken steps in the West
with that end in view.
There was another question which occupied the first place in the
attention of the Church. Though for more than a century it had
vivendi with the western Empire, now,
maintained a sort of mnodus
I8
PAST AND PRESENT
as a result of the movement for reform, the Church was emancipating itself from the Empire, and was rapidly entering into open
conflict with it. In order to be able eventually to resist an attack
by the Emperorthe Papacy had since 1059 had to envisage a reversal
of alliances. It had opened negotiations with the Normans, who
like their northern kin, were inclined to seek the collaborationof the
clergy in political matters.
These negotiations had resulted in an alliance. As the conflict
with the Empire was more or less fended off during the minority
of the emperor Henry IV and as the Normans found it irksome to
give up their predatory habits, this alliance became somewhat
tenuous under Alexander II. But from 1076 there was a complete
rupture and soon bitter war between the Papacy and the Empire.
Robert Guiscard, the principal leader of the Normans, had become a
powerful prince. The alliance was confirmed and Gregory VII was
hardlyin a position to argueabout terms. In ByzantiumMichael VII
had been overthrown (IO78), and Robert, as usual, was eager to
get possession of the Greek shores of the Straits of Otranto. War
broke out between him and Byzantium and Robert obtained the
papal blessing for his expedition as the price of his helping the Pope
against Henry IV. This meant the renunciation of any policy of
Christianfraternitywith the East.
But in 1085 both Guiscard and Gregory died, and Gregory's
successor Victor III soon after. Among the divided Normans it
was Guiscard's brother Roger, who had already won Sicily from the
Moslems, who became supreme. He had no interest in the war
against Byzantium which might cost him the valuable help of the
numerous Greeks of Sicily and Calabria in his struggle with the
Moslems. In ConstantinopleAlexius I Comnenus, who had ousted
Michael VII's successor [Nicephorus III Botaniates, IO078-81], was
above all concerned with the needs of the struggle against the Turks
of Asia Minor and against their kindred the Pechenegs, who were
menacing Bulgaria. Finally, the new pope, Urban II, was a
diplomatist who had no desire to see Byzantium helping Henry IV
or the antipope whom Henry had set up, or to risk such an alliance
of the two Emperorsbecoming the prelude to a union of the Churches
against the Papacy. The negotiations, protracted throughout the
year 1089, had no definite result. But it is clear that they did create
a new climate of opinion and that in the course of the ensuing years
the quarrel was allowed to die down, that anything which might
revive it was carefully avoided, and it was doubtless hoped that
progressive collaborationon other levels would lead graduallyto the
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST CRUSADE
I9
revival of Union. The Pope raised for Alexius a small reinforcement against the Pechenegs, while perhaps the detente also helped
the Byzantine Emperor to recruit others, particularly from Robert
count of Flanders whom Alexius had known since Robert's pilgrimage
to Jerusalem. It is certain that when the Crusade began the
Crusaders, in the first stages, did not treat the Greeks as religious
enemies.
Did Alexius ask for the Crusade? No, if it is meant that Alexius
asked for the organisation of the expedition in the form which it
actually assumed. But that at Piacenza, where at the beginning of
1095 the Pope held a Council, the Byzantine ambassadorsasked for
help for their master and that the Pope spoke to the assembly in that
sense cannot to-day be doubted, much as the matter has been
contested.
Yet that is not the essential question, for the Crusadewas properly
speaking something quite other than the recruitment of soldiers
for Byzantium by Papal mediation. And therefore it is in the West
that we must end our search.
*
*
*
We must deal first with the Pope, because it was to him and not to
the Emperor that the appeal was made. I will not dwell upon the
fact which has been so well brought out of late by differentmediaevalists that the Church, having for centuries left the temporal sword to
the Empire, and been content to confine itself to encouraging those
wars which were fought for the defence or expansionof Christendom,
had come eventually to believe that when the temporal power was
deficient, even more when it was hostile, it was the right or even the
duty of the Church to conduct such wars itself. Nor do I wish to
dwell on the birth of the associatedidea, alreadyexplicit in the mind
of Gregory VII and natural to clerics recruited largely from the
seigneurial class, that service in arms might also be service to the
Church, and that the pernicious warlike activity in which so many
feudal lords engaged and which the Truce and the Peace of God had
tried to restraineven if they could not end it, might at least be diverted
to war for the Faith. All this was alien to Byzantine mentality.
Because the Byzantines had often been at war with their Moslem
neighbours and because the Cross and the prelates had taken part in
those campaigns, they have been regarded as pre-Crusades. We
must beware of confused thinking. That the Byzantine people had
regarded some of these wars as holy wars is true, but the Byzantine
20
PAST AND PRESENT
Church had always refused to consider that participation in such
wars could be of itself a Christianvirtue which could win for soldiers
a diminution of their penalties before the tribunal of divine judgement. The western Church was now proclaiming that with certain
reservations the war for the Faith could earn partial or complete
absolution from sin. It was therefore only in the West that the
concept of the Holy War fully developed.
Both the idea and the practice of the Holy War developed under
the aegis of the Papacy. Though the facts are well known I believe
that it may be opportune to sketch some of the outlines a little more
precisely than has usually been done. For, among other things, it is
important to emphasise that the initiative in the Holy War against
the Moslems was taken before Manzikert and a fortiori before the
advent of the Almoravides. In earlier centuries it was the Moslem
offensive which had forced the Christiansin Spain or the Papacy in
Italy to take up arms, and had thus led the Papacy to deviate from its
original doctrine. But it is to be noted that just at this moment, in
the XIth century, the Moslem danger, far from having increased,had
vanished. In Spain, North Africa and Sicily the Moslem states were
breaking up. Their perpetual internal quarrels led to their
renouncing all external aggression. In Spain in particular, paradoxical as it may seem to day, there was a temper of collaboration
between rivalfaiths such as the Middle Ages rarelywitnessed. Never
had Christians in the western Moslem lands had so little cause for
complaint. In one place only had the situation deteriorated. The
Moslems of North Africa, ruined by the invasion of the Hillali
Arabs, and driven back into the seaports, were no longer able to
devote themselves to the commerce which had been the source of
their wealth. They had therefore embarked on that " Barbary"
piracy which was to continue off and on until the beginning of the
XIXth century. But it does not seem as if it was against these
particular Moslems that Rome wished to take action. It may be
that the expeditions which the Pisans and Genoese made in Io88
against Al-Mahdya, the principal port of Tunis, had the blessing
of Pope Victor III (but it is only his officialbiographerwho says so);
they certainly had no more substantialhelp from him. Gregory VII
conducted a correspondence with a prince of Bougie, into which
there may have entered the idea of an understanding which would
act as a counter-poise to the hostility of his rival of Tunis, but the
correspondencewas chiefly concerned with the local Christiansunder
the protection of the Moslem prince, and, doubtless more covertly,
with the affairs of the Roman merchants who lent their financial
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST CRUSADE
2I
backing to the Holy See. The first great effort of the Papacy against
the Moslems was not in this direction, and here too the Normans
may have been the cause. Roger of Sicily, having defeated the
reinforcements sent to the Moslems of Sicily by the prince of the
Tunisian dynasty of Banu Tamim, made peace with him, and ensured
that he would not give further support to his co-religionists. Roger
had no intention of breaking that peace, and refused the Pisans'
offer to hand over El-Mahdya to him; a little later, when he had
completed the conquest of Sicily, he seized Malta, but the island,
it appears, was not then part of the dominions of the Banu Tamim.
Thereafter Moslem soldiers served in Roger's armies, and made
possible his success against the rival Christianpowers in Italy.
It was, however, on the Sicilian front that the Holy See made its
first official intervention, and in significant circumstances. In
1059, during the period of the Papal- Norman entente, the Norman
leaders did homage to the Pope, and among the territories which
they then obtained the right to conquer, besides those they had taken
from Byzantium, was Moslem Sicily; later Roger was to receive
the extraordinaryprivilege of being legate of the Pope in the island,
a function normally reserved for clerics. But in the first instance
two essential features of the new papal policy appeared. On the
one hand the Papacy was approving, even waging (in a strictly legal
sense, for the Normans had become its vassals), an offensive war
against Islam (or, if you like, a counter offensive to arrestthe Moslem
offensive); on the other hand the Papacybegan to set up in opposition
to the Empire from which it was emancipating itself, a series of
temporal suzerainties, which, vague though they may have been in
strict feudal law, signified none the less an attempt to dispose of
resources which had hitherto been at the disposal of the Empire.
Moreover the Norman conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy meant
the restoration of the Latin church in lands where it had been
weakened not only by the Moslems but by the Byzantines. It is
true that the Pope and the Normans together pursued a tolerant
policy towards the Greek hierarchyof southern Italy, for they did not
look upon them as accomplices of the Patriarchateof Constantinople;
their aim, which was partly achieved, was to bring them into direct
obedience to Rome by granting them a measure of disciplinary and
liturgicalautonomy.
In Spain one can see these different trends at work. In the
beginning the intervention of the lords of the northern Pyrenees
was not the work of the Papacy. The princes of northern Spain
were anxious to take advantage of the weakening of Spanish Islam
22
PAST AND PRESENT
by expansion at its expense, and welcomed the neighbouring French
lords as useful military allies. On the other hand the task of restoring
Christianity in Spain was in large measure conducted under the
influence of Cluny. It can hardly be doubted that it was due to
Cluny that the chief part in the French participationin the Spanish
wars was played by the Burgundians, who had no natural interests
there. What has wrongly been called the BarbastroCrusade (to63)
was solely due to this situation.
But if the intervention of Alexander II, to whom traditional
historiographyhas been wont to ascribe the Barbastroexpedition, is
to be more probably connected with certain new projects he made at
the very end of his pontificate,yet there is no longer any doubt about
that intervention, and the slight advancement of its date does not
alter its essential character any more than that of Gregory VII's
policy which was its continuation. The influence of Cluny on the
popes it produced goes without saying. The men whom the Holy See
encouraged to go to Spain were to some extent connected with the
Normans of Italy. But that does not seem to be the essence of the
matter. At the beginning of this article I pointed out that the
French brought to the Spanish war a spirit of ignorant brutality
which was alien to the Spaniards. At the same time the Holy See
was pursuing in Spain, as in Southern Italy, a policy of religious
re-integration. It claimed that Rome had a special right to temporal
suzerainty over lands reconquered from the infidel. The Church in
Spain had derived from its historical isolation a near autonomy and a
rite of its own, which seemed dangerous from the point of view of
reform itself, as much as from the Roman point of view that reform
should be directed by the Pope. There developed a policy, at first
Cluniac, but afterwards going beyond the plans of Cluny, where
Spain was regarded as a private preserve. The Roman Pontiff
was to take into his own hands the Church of Spain, and to use
French military intervention to strike a bargain in the same way as
was done with the Greeks. Another reason for his taking this line
was that non-Spanish influence would obviously be stronger in fiefs
held by French lords, as it was in those held by the Normans in
Italy.
Among the Spanish princes themselves there were two tendencies:
Aragon, which, owing to its geographicalposition was more open to
unifying influences, entered, like the Normans, into vassalage to the
Holy See. In Castile on the contrary the Roman claims were the
occasion of a conflict which may have begun by causing AlexanderII
to abandon his military project. Whatever the reason, this was
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST CRUSADE
23
not carried out. It is not clear whether official Roman support was
given to the French contingents which took part in the ensuing
expeditions, both before and after the Almoravid invasion, and
especially the great coalition of 1187 which followed that invasion.
In any case the hero who is most honoured in Spanish national
tradition was neither French nor Roman, but the Cid, and he
distinguished himself not only in conflict with the Moslems but also
on occasion with Christians in Valencia, which he conquered; he was
just as popular with his Moslem subjects as with his fellow believers.
But the French both at Barbastro and at Tudela (1087) had broken
their word and had slaughtered all the male Moslems before taking
possession of their women. It was Urban Ii, a better diplomat
than Gregory VII, who was ultimately able to secure the reconciliation
of the Spanish Church by means of certain disciplinary concessions.
And, whatever was the exact role he played in these expeditions, it is
certain that at the least he encouraged them as soon as they had begun.
But he looked for support not to the Burgundians, but to the
Mediterranean powers. Rome had indeed never neglected to
establish its influence whenever the opportunity occurred over the
most distant monarchies, such as that of the Norman William the
Conqueror in England. But it seems that the Papacy was above all
concerned to surround itself with a ring of vassal Mediterranean
states, or allies, capable of helping it alike against the German
Emperor, Islam and even Byzantium if Byzantiurr should ever
In these plans the Abbey of St. Victor of
reverse its policy.
Marseilles appears as the rival of Cluny. The count of Provence
(1085), the count of
(Oi81), the viscount of Melgeuil-Montpellier
Barcelona during the pontificate of Urban II, all became papal
vassals, like Mathilda Countess of Tuscany who bequeathed her
estates to the I-Ioly See; Gregory gave the royal crown to Zvonimir
prince of the Croats. The Papacy maintained excellent relations
with Raymond of St. Gilles, who added successively the counties of
Toulouse (Io88) and Provence (1094) to his Languedoc inheritance
(io66).
Raymond was in 1087 one of the chiefs of the anti-Moslem
coalition against Spain and several of his vassals were to take part
in the operations of the following years, those which Urban II
encouraged after his accession. What is remarkable is that these
operations were directed not against the Almoravides but against
the still independent Moslems of northern Spain, who were perhaps
considered to be their allies, but the attacks certainly induced the
northern Moslems to submit to the Almoravides. The result was
that Spain at the beginning of the XIIth century had nothing but
24
PAST AND PRESENT
Holy War against Holy War with the result that in the middle of the
century the new dynasty of the Almohades embarked on a policy
of intolerance towards the non-Moslems of their dominions quite
contraryto the traditions of their predecessors.
*
*
*
Though it has long been realised that Urban II's eastern projects
were linked with his western projects in that they were both antiMoslem wars, and in that the same men who had gained experiencein
Spain were those whom he was to send to Palestine, less attention
has perhaps been paid to the fact that the Spanish policy of the Holy
See may provide an explanationof its eastern policy in respect of the
Crusade. It can be taken as established by recent research that the
Pope dispatched the Crusade with a mission to collaboratesincerely
with Alexius Comnenus; the Legate Adhemar of Monteil and
Raymond of Toulouse, whom Urban intended to lead the Crusade,
loyally aitempted to carryout their mission in contrastto the deviations
of the other Crusaders. But this thesis has been presented in too
one-sided a manner. It can hardly be denied that what Alexius
originally hoped for was an energetic reinforcementof the same sort
as that which had long been provided by the mercenarytroops whom
Byzantium had hired to serve exclusively Byzantine purposes.
It is also undeniable that he ought to have foreseen, as the shape of
the enterprise became visible, that the Pope's scheme of aid was
going to be more independent: it is true that he both wanted to
impose and succeeded in imposing on the majority of the Crusading
leaders an oath of homage which bound them to keep for themselves
no territory which they might conquer which had once been part of
the ancient territories of Byzantium, but there was no question of
preventing them from making conquests in Syria or Palestine, where
perhaps he thought of accompanyingthem. It was obvious that in
so far as the Crusadewas the Pope's affairthere could be no question
of demandinghomage from the Pope or his legate, and in view of this,
even though none of the chroniclers of the Crusades understood
the point, it is perfectly understandablethat Raymond of Toulouse
should have refused to do homage, if in fact he was ever askedto do so.
If then it can be readily admitted that Urban wanted to succour the
Byzantine Empire without any mental reservations,it is nevertheless
true that he had also a programmeof his own. This programmecan
only be known by inference for no text which expounds it has been
preserved and there is no reason for thinking that such a text ever
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIRST CRUSADE
25
existed. It can however hardly be denied that the programme
included the establishment in Syria of a Latin or semi-Latin power,
about whose form we cannot be precise. Such a state would of
course be dependent upon the Holy See in certain respects, and even
if there remained Greek clerics in Syria, as in Southern Italy, or as
there remained Spanish clerics in Spain, there would be a new predominance of the Holy See. This would be done with the goodwill
of restored Byzantium, if the campaign should have been brought
to a successful conclusion, but it would underline the fact that for a
weakened Byzantium was being substituted in whole or in part a
strengthened Holy See. That would inevitably run counter to the
the influence of Constantinople over the eastern Christians, those
of the Greek rite and others, who would be brought to form a new
sphere of Latin influence; in place of the semi-solidarity of the four
eastern patriarchates there would follow the isolation of the
patriarchateof Constantinople,much reduced in prestige. The plan
envisaged extending to Palestine what had been begun in Sicily
and Spain and raising the prestige of the Papacy by completing the
chain of its advancedposts. That the programmewas never realised
in fact is no argument against the hypothesis that such had been
the Pope's intention.
This then was his conception of the Crusadewhen Urban preached
at Clermont. As in Italy and as in Spain, it was no longer a time
of great Moslem aggression. The Turkish danger, recent as it was,
His
had much decreased since the death of Malik Shah in 1092.
heirs were quarrelling. In Asia Minor, Alexius's intrigues were
well able to keep the remaining independent Turcoman chiefs at
loggerheads. There was good hope that their territories might be
re-absorbedin the Empire, as had happened so often before. When
at Piacenza Alexius asked for succour it was not an appeal of urgency
or despair. It was rathera plea born of hope for help in a reconquest
which had become possible. There is no reason to think that Urban
did not know it, or that such an appeal was not for him an encouragement to action. That action he entrusted to his old and faithful ally
Raymond of Toulouse, enriched by his experience in Spain, and to
his Legate Adh6mar, Raymond's friend. Doubtless he did not see
much furtherahead.
*
*
*
It was at this point that there occurred the intervention of the
third party which metamorphosed the Crusade, making it totally
26
PAST AND PRESENT
unlike what it had been hitherto and giving to it that character which
it has ever since had for posterity, a " mass " movement. True,
Urban II had foreseen that Raymond's forces would be joined by
reinforcements from neighbouring lands; the Pope had himself
preached the Crusade in west-central France and had caused it to
be preached elsewhere. Events outran him. We have hardly anything which he wrote about the Crusade; but his letter to Bologna
indicates that in 1096 he was already seeking to dam a flood which,
if it were left unchecked would be prejudicial to order and the
necessary control of the Crusade by the clergy. Forces which he
had not foreseen had been let loose and were to make of the Crusade
something very different from what he had wished.
What were these forces ? Gallons of ink have been poured out
in discussing whether the Crusade at this stage was more or less
religious or self seeking. According to their own preconceptions
men have seen in it clear evidence either of pure religious faith or of
outright seigneurial or mercantile greed. Such a presentation of the
problem is absolutely false, because it was not the joining of the
Crusade by groups or individuals who saw in it an opportunity
for seeking their own advantage that made it different from what it
originally was. Spiritual enthusiasm and material greed were not
opposed to each other within the consciences of the Crusaders (nor
in those of the revolutionaries of I789), and the real problem is not
to weigh the one against the other, but to try to understand how far
one was supported by the other, and how far each explains the other.
Naturally their relationship was not everywhere the same, and can
therefore lead us to no general conclusion.
Much has been said about mercantile greed, for the profits which
the Italian merchants made out of the Crusade are well known.
But what the merchants at once realised when the expedition was
suggested was its risks, including the risk of losing the commrnercial
positions they had won in Moslem lands before the Crusade. It is
true that Amalfi, which was perhaps the best established of all in the
eastern trade, being in a state of revolt against the Normans was in a
helpless position, but the other Italian maritime cities were very
careful to have nothing to do with the enterprise until its success was
practically assured, and then they tried to secure their share in the
profits. As for Venice, what was essential to her was the Byzantine
market, and for her there was no question of taking part in any
expedition except in alliance with the Byzantine fleet until the
crusaders had passed beyond the boundaries claimed by Byzantium.
For Pisa the main concern was not to distract forces more usefully
AN INTRODUCTIONTO THE FIRST CRUSADE
27
occupied in the struggle with the Moslem pirates in the west. Only
the Genoese came immediately to the help of the crusaders in the
East, but, it will be noticed, only as individuals; Genoa itself intervened no earlier than the other cities. Altogether, apart from the
special case of the Norman Bohemond in South Italy, there was no
widespread recruitment of crusaders in Italy before IIoo and the
After-Crusade. Nor was the Pope, preoccupied as he was with the
struggle with the Empire, likely to have encouraged it. The
Crusade was created pre-eminently in lands where the idea of commercial profit could not have arisen. The profit motive therefore
does not come into consideration.
The Crusade was born on French soil, and when its first phase
of the papal initiative had passed, its adherents came rather from the
north than from the south, where, until the After-Crusade, Raymond
stood alone. But even in France what strikes one immediately is the
division of the Crusaders into two groups. It has always been realised
that the Barons' Crusade was preceded by the People's Crusade,
but the social implications of this fact have not always been sufficiently
stressed. Already in Spain in 1087 men of the people had fought
side by side with the barons and in any case a feudal lord was always
attended by a train of men-at-arms. What was new in 1093, and
what was never repeated in later Crusades, was that the People's
Crusade was distinct from the Barons' Crusade. In other words it
took place as if the feudal class structure of French society in the
XIth century did not exist. If it was not a revolt, it was at least a
split. This was the age of the peace movements, and of nascent
urban autonomy, both consciously anti-seigneurial phenomena.
To a certain extent there was yet another split, for lords and
commons found themselves on the same side in opposition to the
prelates. It is true that the Crusade had its priests, men of the
people, and no one has ever denied the great credit due to the Pope and
his Legate. But there were no episcopal troops in this holy war.
This was the age when the people supported reform of the Church
against the bishops, who were often temporal lords rather than
pastors; as for the great barons, it was not their way to leave the
conduct of wars to others.
What was the state of mind of barons and people ? What drew
them to take part in such an unheard-of enterprise? Partly the
Byzantine appeal. Partly because, if the situation of the pilgrims
and of the Christians in Palestine had not changed very much, there
had been in the XIth century an increase in the number of pilgrims,
made possible by improved commercial relations, and by the conversion of the Hungarians, which allowed them the use of the Danube
28
PAST AND PRESENT
route. In consequence every incident, every report of the troubles
of the Christians in the East, which hitherto had affected few, now
reached a wider public. It is not the worsening of the situation in
the East, it is the greater interest of the West in the East which is to
some extent the explanation of the Crusade.
But above all it is clear that all this would have meant nothing had
not so many people in the West been materiallyand morally disposed
to attempt the great and wonderful adventure. There is no need
here to go over again what has been told a thousand times of the
ardent but crude and militant faith and the social unrest at all levels
in France at the end of the XIth century. The common people
with nothing to leave behind and ready to depart at once, the Lords
who, having to settle their affairs,were slower but no less determined;
the People went in search of immediate materialand spiritual profit,
hoping to return if it pleased God, the Lords to spend the rest of
their lives in the Holy War and to establish themselves in new and
marvellous lands where they would reap the reward of their service
to God first in this world and then in the next: it was only saints who
believed that their bliss would not begin here below . . . What is
important is not to examine this faith, evident even amongst the
most worldly, who were, spasmodically,the more avid of redemption
because they knew themselves to be worldly, but to discover why this
faith induced them to go crusading. Some respectable text books
in their chapter on the Crusades tell us that the Crusading spirit
declined after the First Crusade because faith itself declined: but in
their chapterson art and on the monasticlife one learnsthat it was the
same faith which in the XIIIth centuryinspired the Gothic cathedrals,
and produced a St. Francis or an Aquinas. We have therefore to
explain not a decline of faith, but a change in its outward manifestation. While in the XIth century men were ready to wander far
afield in search of the chance of a better life, which for the first time
they had begun confusedly to believe possible, in the event they came
up against too many obstacles and difficulties. In the XIIIth
century the same faith received as its due cathedralsraised by townspeople who had made good their right to a good life at home.
These are some brief suggestions which there is not room to
develop in this article. They indicate that one ought to study the
Crusade as a social phenomenon. None of the elements of which
it was made up was peculiarto it. Like all great historicalmovements
it bears certain family resemblances to others, for instance to the
great migrations in antiquity and sometimes in modern times which
were undertakenin response to a divine call. What makes it unique
AN INTRODUCTIONTO THE FIRST CRUSADE
29
is the combination of very diverse elements, which, came together,
changed, and fused into a new pattern. Such a study will bring out
what was original in the movement, not by virtue of some chance
inherent quality, but because it was a unique combination of factors
which together produceda result differentin kind from anything that
they could have achieved separately.
To sum up: the internal development of the Moslem world
in the XIth century provoked in the East a resumption of the
religious offensive of Islam in a new form to the detriment of
Byzantine Christendom, but without affecting Christians in the
old Moslem conquests or western pilgrims in Palestine. But the
Byzantine defeat and internal developments in the West led the
western world to ascribe to their grievances an importance which
they had not had before in western eyes. It was in the West that
there was first conceived, with no new provocation from Islam,
the policy of a Holy War against it, in part the result of papal action.
The Papacy saw in the Crusade a means of working for the re-union
of Christendomunder its own leadership, one of the objectives of the
Reform Movement as the Papacy conceived it, and a necessity if the
Papacy was to continue to resist the Empire. The combination
of these various constituent factors explains how it was that an
expedition was launched againstJerusalem,where local circumstances
no more justified it at that particular moment than at any earlier
time.
Claude Cahen.
Strasbourg.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
NOTES
The questions dealt with are too general for it to be possible to give detailed
references. These can easily be found in the classical treatises covering the
various branches of general history. The fullest are to be found in Glotz,
Histoire Generale t. II, and in Fliche and Martin, Histoire de l'Eglise, t. VIII,
I944. I shall therefore only indicate here some of the more recent and rarer
in the East, the bibliographical
publications. First, for the whole situation
"
references will be found in my article: En quoi la Conquete turque appelait
elle la Croisade ?" (Bulletin de la Faculte des Lettres de l'Universite de Strasbourg,
Novembre 1950) of which the first part of this article is to some extent a
reproduction. For the latter part of this article see:for Spain:
M. Defourneaux, Les Franfais en Espagne auxXIe etXIIe siecles, Paris I949
(with bibliography).
P. David, " Gr6goire VII, Cluny et Alphonse VI," in Etudes historiques
sur la Galice et le Portugal, Paris-Lisbonne, I947, PP. 341-439.
R. Menendez Pidal, La Espana del Cid, fourth edition, Madrid, I947.
30
PAST AND PRESENT
for Sicily:
Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, second edition, a cura di Nallino
vol.
Catania
etc.,
III,
I937.
for North Africa:
Georges Marcais: La Berberie ct l'Orient au Moyeiz-Age, Paris I946.
Ch. A. Julien: Histoire de l'Afrique di Nord, second edition revised and
corrected by A. Le Tourneau, Paris 1951.
C. Courtois, " Gregoire VII et l'Afrique du Nord," Revue Historique 1945.
R. S. Lopez, " Le Facteur 6conomique dans la Politique africaine des Papes,"
ibid. 1947.
for Byzantium:
Stephen Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. I, Cambridge 1951.
Jugie, Le Schisme byzantin, Paris 1945.
Every, The Byzantine Patriarchate, London 1947.
Grumel, " Jerusalem entre Rome et Byzance," Echos d'Orient, 1939.
Charanis, " Byzantium, the West and the origin of the First Crusade,"
Byzantion 1949.
A. Krey, " Urban's Crusade, success or failure?" American Historical
Review 1946-47.
E. Joranson, " The spurious letter of Alexis to the count of Flanders,"
ibid. 1948-49.
Hill, " Raymond of St. Gilles in the Pope's plan of Greek-Frankish Friendship," Speculum 1951.
B. Leib, Rome, Kiev et Byzance, Paris 924.
W. Holtzmann, " Studien zur Orientpolitik der Reforminpapsttum,"
Historische Vierteljahrsschaft 1924.
idem, "Die Unionsverhandlungen . . . ," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 1929.
for Rome and the West:
C. Erdmann, Die Entstehung der Kreuzzugsgedanke, Stuttgart, 1925.
P. Rousset, Les Origines et les caracteres de la Iere Croisade, Neuchatel, 1945.
Y. Lefebre, Pierre l'Ermite et la Croisade, Amiens 1945.
Delaruelle, " Essai sur la formation de l'idee de Croisade," Bulletin de
Littirature ecclisiatique 1941-45; I953-4.
This list does not claim to be exhaustive.