Download The earliest crusaders had honorable motives that

The modern state of Israel has much in common with the crusader states of the
Middle Ages. When discussing history, it is usually dangerous to rely on analogies; but
similar causes produce similar effects. There are many factors that existed in the Near
East during the Middle Ages that are still constants today. The first constant is the
economics of the region serving as a barrier between the Far East and Europe. The
economic revival of Europe in the eleventh century increased the significance of the
region. With the importance of oil, the region is just as valuable today as it was in the
time of the crusades. Islam still provides the same social cohesion today as it did in the
Middle Ages. Even in our modern times Jerusalem still possesses great religious
significances, thus conflict in Jerusalem is going to be much more intense than if it were
fought in any other region of the world.i
Modern Israel and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were both founded on a desire to
control Jerusalem. Both were successfully created because although they were greatly
outnumbered, their Muslim Arab neighbors were so torn by internal strife that they were
not able to effectively oppose the new non-Muslim state. After both countries were
founded, the Arabs slowly coalesced in opposition to the new country.ii The Latin
warriors, like Israeli soldiers today, were man for man more than a match for their foes;
but once their enemies stopped fighting each other, the Crusader States were unable to
fend off the Arab attacks on their own and were dependent on aid from Europe to keep
their Muslim enemies as bay. This worked as long as the Crusades kept the interest of
Europe. A similar relationship exists today between Jews in Israel and non Zionist Jews
living around the world.iii
The story of the Crusades began in 1095 when Pope Urban II called the first
crusade to liberate the Holy Land from the rule of the infidel and restore it to Christian
control. The Byzantine emperor asked for aid from the West, but the liberation of
Jerusalem was only a pretext: what the emperor really wanted was troops to help him
launch an offensive to regain Asia Minor, which was of greater strategic value to him.
The emperor was surprised when instead of 10,000 professional soldiers, he received a
fanatical army.iv
Although, the absolution of sins promised by the pope for those who would give
their lives to regain Jerusalem would become the mainstay of all the crusades and was
what allowed the pope to raise the army and funds necessary for the crusades, the
ultimate goal of Urban and his successors was not the founding of the Latin Crusader
States under the overlordship of the pontiff, but ultimately what the popes desired was the
re-unification of the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity under the Bishop of
Rome.v
It is quite unfortunate that the crusades led not to harmony within the body of
Christ as was hoped, but to a permanent schism between Roman Catholics and Eastern
Orthodox Christians when the crusaders destroyed the Byzantine Empire by sacking its
capitol Constantinople during the fourth crusade.vi The Byzantine Empire was restored,
but to keep from becoming the target of a crusade and to receive aid against the Ottoman
Turks, the Byzantines had to agree to reunite with the Latin Church on terms dictated by
Rome. This reunion was so unpopular with the majority of Greek Christians that they
preferred to submit to the Muslim Turks instead of to the Latin Christians who were
supposed to be offering them aid.vii
In 1095 when the first crusade was preached, many Christians and Jerusalem
itself had been under the control of Muslims for four and a half centuries without any
calls for crusades. The spark that ignited the crusades was the destruction of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre in 1095 by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim biAmr Allah. The news
of the outrage was carried back to Europe by returning pilgrims. viii The Al-Hakim
persecution was fierce, but he was mad and the persecution stopped after his death. The
non-Greek Christians in the Holy Land never requested military aid from the West
although they were familiar with many Norman mercenaries. It is doubtful that they
would have believed that the Latin Christians would have sent an army even if they had
asked for one. When eastern scholars tried to explain the causes of the first crusade, the
suffering of Christian, under Muslim control was never mentioned.ix
Because of the religious fervor and expansionist tendencies of the Turks that were
new converts to Islam, the Byzantine Empire was eroding in Asia Minor. The Emperor
Alexis was much more concerned with stabilizing his borders in Asia-Minor and not in a
thrust towards Jerusalem motivated by religious zealotry. Jerusalem was not as important
to the Greek Christians as it was to the Latin Christians. The Greek Christians did make
pilgrimages to Jerusalem, but not in any great numbers except from the neighboring
areas.
The Byzantine Emperor, believing it vain to ask for aid from the West to regain
his territory, made the regaining control of the Holy Lands the central theme of his
propaganda to the West. It is doubtful that the Patriarch of Constantinople cared anymore
about the return of Jerusalem to the Empire than did the Emperor. It was in this manner
that the Holy Land became the object of the Crusade when in reality it was
Constantinople that was in the real danger of being destroyed by the Turks and not the
Holy Seplecure x
The Byzantines requested aid from the pope, but could not have predicted the
form that it would take in the end. To the Byzantines, the idea that service of arms could
also be a service to the Church was completely alien. The Byzantines had often been at
war with the Muslims, and these wars were considered Holy Wars. The symbol of the
cross and church officials often took part, but it was never believed in the Eastern Church
that a soldier could lessen his penalty for sins by fighting in a war. The idea of crusading
to make atonement for one’s sins was a papal innovation.xi
The Emperor Alexus originally hoped for aid in the form of mercenaries that
would serve strictly Byzantine purposes, and when he discovered the scheme that the
pope had in mind was going to be subject to Rome and not Constantinople, he secured
oaths from the first crusade’s leaders that they would not conquer and keep any territory
that had formerly been part of the Byzantine Empire. The idea that the conquered
territory would be restored to the Byzantine Empire was at odds with the pope’s plan.
When Pope Urban II first preached the crusade at Clermont, he planned to set up a Latin
power in Syria that would owe allegiance to the Holy See in Rome. The pope expected a
newly restored Byzantine Empire to gratefully submit to Roman leadership.
Soon after the first crusade started, the crusades became something that Urban II
never had intended: a mass movement. Urban II had preached the crusade in West
Central France and had his subordinates preach it in other places, but the message grew
and spread so fast that the Church was losing control of it, thus by 1096 the papacy was
trying to dam the flood of people eager to take part in the Crusade. It is true that there
were priests in the crusade and the pope got his due for instigating the crusades, but the
great barons that were taking part in the crusade were not going to leave the conduct of
the war to anyone else.xii
Crusaders with honorable motives that drew them to don the crusader cross
founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The knights and peasants that took part in the
crusades volunteered to take on great physical and fiscal hardships. The motives for
doing so were religious fervor and the desire to worship in the Holy Land. Pope Urban II
promised any crusader that met death on the battlefield that his sins would be forgiven,
and that he would be assured entry into Heaven. Certainly there were those who joined
with more temporal motives, such as political ambition, desire for adventure, and wealth.
Others simply joined because it was the thing to do after listening to popular crusade
preachers, the way some do after listening to a revival message.xiii However, the popular
picture of landless younger sons of nobility without resources of their own departing for
Jerusalem is incorrect. This may have been the case for the many peasants who had
nothing and could only hope their lot would improve, but not so for the aristocratic
knights. Many knights had to finance themselves, and they required a budget four or five
times their annual income.xiv
Once the crusade was under way the warriors endured many hardships. Shortages
of water were such a problem that many died of thirst along the way. It was the
crusaders’ faith in God that kept them going.xv Despite the good intentions of most of the
individual crusaders, there were problems that contributed to the downfall of the
Crusader States. The crusaders lacked coherence. Each crusader had taken an individual
vow with the goal of benefiting their own soul. This did not necessarily make them
willing submit to others, and as a result many cowardly deserted the host.
A great deficiency for the Crusader States was that the crusades only offered a
short-term fix to a long-term problem. The crusaders’ vows did not require the crusaders
to remain in the Holy Land indefinitely. Despite their pride in their accomplishments, as
soon as the vast majority of the crusaders fulfilled their vow to fight and visit the holy
sites they returned to Europe, which the vast majority did. Without a large committed
force that considered the Holy Land their permanent home, the Crusader States could
never maintain a coherent and sustained defense against the marauding Muslim neighbor
who surrounded the Crusader States and who also considered the Holy Land to belong to
themxvi
Much has been said about various international organizations set up in modern
times that were supposed to bring an end to war and a beginning to world peace, but
people rarely examine similar efforts from the past. The medieval papacy was one such
attempt. Although no one would claim that the crusades were ever supposed to be the war
to end all wars, the pope did broker agreements in Europe. Before the first crusade, there
was a reform movement in Europe to end all the petty warfare that had plagued the
continent for centuries. The pope, who was also a reformer, sought to strengthen the
papacy to end wars in Europe and then channel all the energy that had been going into the
Christians fighting Christians in Europe, to Christians fighting Muslims in Asia. The
popes strengthened themselves when they them cast themselves as the champions of the
common good by imposing peace in Europe during the crusades verses the petty nobles
that would use any chance to increase their wealth and power at the expense of their
neighbor or overlord.
During the time of the crusades, the Roman Church had grown more powerful
than any state in Europe. The Church could raise funds by direct taxation and thus raise
and maintain its own armies. It had its own courts and could bring kings and peasants to
justice in those courts. It addition it controlled all education and agencies of public
information. The Church was also responsible for public health and charity.xvii Although
the popes were able to organize and launch the crusades, they were unable to control
them once they were underway.xviii
The command in the field fell to the kings and nobles that often bickered amongst
themselves for control. This failure to unify behind a single leader led to disaster on the
battlefield, which weakened the popes that preached the crusades and not the Kings that
led them. Traditionally, when a battle was lost, Christians seeking an answer would
blame the defeat on their sins. This ceased to work and more reasonable answers were
sought when the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick II (who had been excommunicated by
the church) led a successful crusade and Louis IX (the only French King to be a
canonized a saint) led a failed crusade. Many blamed God for the failure. One French
monk informed God that it would take a fool to follow Him into battle after the failure of
Richard the Lion Heart.xix The Church maintained that the defeats in the crusades were a
result of sins, but blamed the secular authorities specifically for their sins of vanity and
greed, which caused them to put their own interest above those of the Holy Land.xx
This explanation worked for some, but many blamed the papacy and not God for
offering spiritual rewards to armies fighting the pope’s enemies in Europe. This meant
the pope in the eyes of many in Europe was equally guilty of greed and vanity for putting
his own interest above those of the Holy Land. Urban II had preached that Christians
should stop fighting Christians and instead, fight the Muslims who were the enemy of all
Christians. Leo IX and Gregory VII were busy trying to establish theocracy in Europe, so
they abandoned this idea to fight wars in Europe against other Christians while the
Muslims triumphed in the Holy Land.xxi
The popes are not entirely to blame for the shifting of resources. Pope Innocent III
was outraged that the fourth crusade was diverted away from the Holy Land, but once the
Latin Empire was established he thought it was necessary to crusade against the Greek
Christians that refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the pope. This continued to
divert from the Holy Land even more important resources: soldiers and money.xxii
The fifth crusade was another failure with the papacy taking the blame for the
defeat. The papal legate Pelagius was quite headstrong and prone to squabbling with
other leaders. The conduct of the pope’s representative raised much animosity. The
churchman’s greed had led to the disaster in Egypt. This also raised the question, “Why
was the church leading the army in battle anyway?” Guillaume le Clerc, a poet and
social commentator of the era who was critical of the Pope observed the ancient
distinction between warriors and priests:
“Because of the legate who governed and led the Christians, everyone says
in truth, we lost that city through folly and sin. We should be greatly
reproached. For when the clergy take the function of leading knights,
certainly that is against law. But the clerk should recite aloud from his
scriptures and his psalms and let the knight go to his great battle-fields.
Let him [the clerk] remain before his altars and pray for the warriors and
abrive the sinners. Greatly should Rome be humiliated for loss of
Damietta.xxiii
As much criticism as there was directed against the pope for the misconduct of the
crusades in The East, there was far more abuse leveled against the papacy for launching a
crusade against the Albigensian heretics. There had long been widespread heresy in this
region, and after the normal threats and punishments failed the pope launched a crusade
against the heretics. In 1209, Innocent III offered the same spiritual rewards for those
fighting heretics in Europe as those who fought infidels in the Near East. The pope was
faced with the serious accusation of causing division between neighbors while the
Muslims in the Holy Land rampaged unchecked. Many troubadours expressed this
disgust of the popes, casting themselves as pious Christians who had no interest except
that the Holy Sepulchre remain in Christian hands while they portrayed the popes as
being more concerned with consolidating their control over Western Europe than they
were in seeing the Holy Land delivered from the control of the Muslims.xxiv
The popes justified their use of crusades against heretics in Europe on the grounds
that crusades were to be used to protect the interest of Christendom no matter where the
threat came from. The catch was the interest of Christendom just so happened to be the
same as that of the papacy.xxv As questionable as the crusades against the heretics in
France were, the political crusades in Italy and Germany were that much more
questionable. Pope Gregory IX attacked the lands of the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick
II while the emperor was crusading in Palestine. Although full crusading indulgences
were not granted and the soldier wore the sign of the keys of Peter and not the cross,
resources were still being spent in Europe to attack the lands of an emperor who they
should have been supporting in the Holy Land as he fought the Muslims.
This political crusade and others like it hijacked the crusading movement to
further the material aims of the popes. Taxes were collected all over Europe to increase
the pope’s control of Italy. No matter how broad a view the pope and his cannon lawyers
took of the crusades, the public at large did not consider crusading in Europe in the same
regard that they held for crusading in the Holy Land. This broad view permanently
damaged the prestige of the pope in the eyes of Christians at large.
The first crusade was initiated because Pope Urban II wanted to bridge the gap to
reunite the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity. The desire
for Christians to posses the land where Jesus and all the prophets lived eventually had the
opposite effect. The schism was made irreparably wide when the crusaders, for the most
part, kept for themselves the land that they were supposed to be re-conquering from the
Muslims on behalf of the Greek Byzantine emperor, and then when the Latin crusaders
sacked Constantinople in one of the most profitable and treacherous looting expeditions
in the history of the world. As the crusades became an entrenched social institution, the
papacy expanded the meaning of the crusades. Anything that threatened the papacy’s
control over Europe was worthy of a crusade. First the popes, in the name of stamping
out heresy, turned neighbor against neighbor in France while promising the forgiveness
of sins for those who would participate in the debacle. The popes then used the crusades
to consolidate their control over Italy at the expense of the temporal ruler, the Holy
Roman Emperor all the while the Muslims were continually eating away at the Crusader
States until nothing was left of them. While this diversion of resources sustained the
popes’ control as the dominate power in Europe, it only lessoned the regard that Europe’s
population had for the papacy. This contributed to the ultimate downfall of the popes as
the leaders of Europe, just as the popes themselves debased the lofty goals of the
crusades.
Bibliography
1. Issawi, Charles. “Crusades and Current Crises in the Near East: A Historical Parallel.”
International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 33, no. 3 (July 1957):
269-279.
2. Charanis, Peter. “Aims of the Medieval Crusades and How They Were Viewed by
Byzantium.” Church History 21 no. 2 (June 1952): 123-134.
3. Cahen, Claude. “An Introduction to the First Crusade.” Past and Present 6 (November
1954):6-30.
4.
i
Current crises 269,270
current crises 272
iii
current crises 273
iv
Aims Of Crusades 128
v
Aims of Crusaders 124
vi
Aims of Crusaders 130
vii
Aims of Crusades 130-131
viii
introduction 6
ix
introduction 13
x
introduction 16
xi
introduction 20
xii
introduction 26,27
xiii
A Crusader 323-324
xiv
Book 20
xv
Crusader 326
xvi
crusader 322
xvii
international 7
xviii
international 8
xix
international 8, criticism 379
xx
criticism 380
xxi
criticism 380-381
xxii
criticism 384
xxiii
criticism 384-386
xxiv
criticism 388
ii
xxv
Aims of Crusades 129