Download File - Mr. C at Hamilton

The Crusades
You did WHAT?!?
 In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech
at Georgetown University in which he discussed the
West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of
September 11. The speech contained a short but
significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton
observed that “when the Christian soldiers took
Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every
woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple
Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of
the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple
Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This
story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was “still being told
today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”
 From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the
crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in
which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to
murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims,
laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that
would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In
many corners of the Western world today, this view is too
commonplace and apparently obvious even to be
challenged.
 But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What
everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be
true. From the many popular notions about the crusades,
let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.
 Nothing could be further from the truth, and even a
cursory chronological review makes that clear. In A.D.
632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa,
Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia,
and Corsica were all Christian territories.
 Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was
still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean,
orthodox Christianity was the official, and
overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those
boundaries were other large Christian communities—not
necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian.
Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example,
was Nestorian.
 By A.D. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt,
Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor,
and southern France. Italy and her associated islands
were under threat, and the islands would come under
Muslim rule in the next century.
 The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely
destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and
Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula. Those
in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the
formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by
Muslims.
 The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed
regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years,
from Christian control by violence, in the course of
military campaigns deliberately designed to expand
Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor
did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The
attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by
Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked
the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about A.D.
800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and
began to island-hop across from North Africa toward
Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland
by 837.
 A confused struggle for control of southern and central
Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into
the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950,
Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient
monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim
pirate bases were established along the coast of northern
Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the
deep inland were launched.
 Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became
involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in
directing the defense of the territory around them.
 One version of Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont in
1095 urging French warriors to embark on what would
become known as the First Crusade does note that they
might “make spoil of [the enemy’s] treasures,” but this
was no more than an observation on the usual way of
financing war in ancient and medieval society.
 As Fred Cazel* has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient
cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support
themselves decently on a crusade.” From the very
beginning, financial considerations played a major role in
crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many
of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they
caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders
took this into account and began saving money long
before they set out, the expense was still nearly
prohibitive.
*Professor in the history department at the
University of Connecticut from 1948-1988. He was
actively involved in the Medieval Studies Program.
 The popes resorted to ever more desperate ploys to raise
money to finance crusades, from instituting the first
income tax in the early thirteenth century to making a
series of adjustments in the way that indulgences were
handled that eventually led to the abuses condemned by
Martin Luther.
 In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and
their numbers were dwarfed by those who were
bankrupted. Most medieval people were quite well
aware of this, and did not consider crusading a way to
improve their financial situations.
 This has been a very popular argument, at least from
Voltaire on. It seems credible and even compelling to
modern people, steeped as they are in materialist
worldviews. And certainly there were cynics and
hypocrites in the Middle Ages—beneath the obvious
differences of technology and material culture, medieval
people were just as human as we are, and subject to the
same failings.
 However, like the first two myths, this statement is
generally untrue, and demonstrably so. For one thing,
the casualty rates on the crusades were usually very high,
and many if not most crusaders left expecting not to
return. At least one military historian has estimated the
casualty rate for the First Crusade at…
 However, like the first two myths, this statement is
generally untrue, and demonstrably so. For one thing,
the casualty rates on the crusades were usually very high,
and many if not most crusaders left expecting not to
return. At least one military historian has estimated the
casualty rate for the First Crusade at…
75 percent!
 The statement of the thirteenth-century crusader Robert
of Crésèques, that he had “come from across the sea in
order to die for God in the Holy Land”—which was
quickly followed by his death in battle against
overwhelming odds—may have been unusual in its force
and swift fulfillment, but it was not an atypical attitude.
 The statement of the thirteenth-century crusader Robert
of Crésèques, that he had “come from across the sea in
order to die for God in the Holy Land”—which was
quickly followed by his death in battle against
overwhelming odds—may have been unusual in its force
and swift fulfillment, but it was not an atypical attitude.
 Crusaders were not drafted. Participation was voluntary,
and participants had to be persuaded to go. The primary
means of persuasion was the crusade sermon, and one
might expect to find these sermons representing
crusading as profoundly appealing.
 This is, generally speaking, not the case. In fact, the
opposite is true: crusade sermons were replete with
warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering,
and often death. That this was the reality of crusading
was well known anyway.
 Muslims had been attacking Christians for more than 450
years before Pope Urban declared the First Crusade.
They needed no incentive to continue doing so.
 Up until quite recently, Muslims remembered the
crusades as an instance in which they had beaten back a
puny western Christian attack.
 An illuminating vignette is found in one of Lawrence of
Arabia’s letters, describing a confrontation during post–
World War I negotiations between the Frenchman
Stéphen Pichon and Faisal al-Hashemi (later Faisal I of
Iraq). Pichon presented a case for French interest in Syria
going back to the crusades, which Faisal dismissed with a
cutting remark: “But, pardon me, which of us won the
crusades?”
 Most of the Arabic-language historical writing on the
crusades before the mid-nineteenth century was
produced by Arab Christians, not Muslims, and most of
that was positive.
 There was no Arabic word for “crusades” until that
period, either, and even then the coiners of the term
were, again, Arab Christians.
 It had not seemed important to Muslims to distinguish
the crusades from other conflicts between Christianity
and Islam.
 Crusades – Weren’t an evil plot by Christians.
 Born ~ 570 AD
 Lived in Mecca
 At age 40, he reported being visited by Gabriel in a
cave and received his first revelation from God.
 Three years after this event Muhammad started
preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming
that "God is One", that complete "surrender" (lit.
islām) to him is the only way acceptable to God, and
that he was a prophet and messenger of God.
 Muhammad gained few early followers and was ran
out of town.
 Early Arabic religion was pagan.
 Many gods, ~360.
 Some scholars think Allah was one of the pagan
gods.
 Merchants made a TON of money selling idols and
other trinkets of all the many gods.
 Mohammed was ruining their profits.
 And the Kaaba…
 The Quran contains several verses regarding the
origin of the Kaaba, it states that the Kaaba was the
first House of Worship, and that it was built or rebuilt by Ibrahim and Ishmael on God's instructions.
 (Abraham, his son with his servant woman, Hagar.)
 Ibn Kathir (1300-1373), the famous commentator on the
Quran, mentions two interpretations among the Muslims
on the origin of the Kaaba. One is that the shrine was a
place of worship for Angels before the creation of man.
Later, a temple was built on the location by Adam and
Eve which was lost during the flood in Noah's time and
was finally rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael as
mentioned later in the Quran.
 It is hard to analyze the rock because of its
significance to Muslims, but the best guess is that it
is a meteorite.
 The Kaaba was considered a holy and sacred site by
the local pagan Arabs before Mohammed “remade”
it into an Islamic shrine.
 As part of the pilgrimage, Muslims walk seven times
around the Kaaba in a counter-clockwise direction.
 Goes to Medina (this starts the Muslim calendar).
 Lives there for 8 years.
 Becomes politically powerful.
 Begins raids on Meccan caravans.
 Allah permits attacks on your enemy to take their
stuff.
 Comes back to Mecca with an army of 10,000 and
seizes the city with little bloodshed.
 The 'Five Pillars' of Islam are the foundation of
Muslim life:
 Shahada: Faith – There is one God, Allah, and
Mohammed is his prophet
 Salat: Prayer – Pray 5 times a day, facing Mecca
 Zakāt: Charity - charitable giving based on
accumulated wealth.
 Sawm: Fasting – e.g. Ramadan
 Hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca – at least once, if able
 Quran (8:38-39) - “Say to those who have disbelieved, if
they cease (from disbelief) their past will be forgiven...
And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief
and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and
the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the
whole of the world ]. But if they cease (worshipping others
besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what
they do.”
 Muslims are told to fight unbelievers until they are
either dead, converted to Islam, or in a permanent
state of subjugation under Muslim domination.
 Through the centuries, Muslims have forced
Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians,
pagans and others to accept Islam, either by bluntly
offering them death as an alternative, or by making
their lives so miserable (ie. taxes, denial of rights...)
that the conquered eventually convert to Islam
under the strain.
 The crusades were a series of holy wars called by
popes with the promise of indulgences for those
who fought in them and directed against external
and internal enemies of Christendom for the
recovery of Christian property or in defense of the
Church or Christian people.
 Crusades were characterized by the taking of vows
and the granting of indulgences to those who
participated.
 Like going on pilgrimage, to which they were often
likened, crusading was an act of Christian love and
piety that compensated for and paid the penalties
earned by sin.
 It marked a break in earlier Christian medieval
conceptions of warfare in that crusades were
penitential warfare. Crusades combined the ideas
of: a) Holy War and b) and Pilgrimage to produce
the concept of "indulgence" (remission of penance
and/or sin granted by papacy for participation in
sacred activity).
 Difference between Augustinian “just war” and
“crusade”:
 The standard for a Christian “just war” as
developed by Augustine (c. A.D. 400) is: “rightful
intention on the part of the participants, which
should always be expressed through love of God and
neighbour; a just cause; and legitimate proclamation
by a qualified authority.” (Quoted from J. RileySmith, The Crusades, Yale University, 1987.)
 The doctrine of holy war/crusade added two further
assumptions:
 1) Violence and its consequences–death and injury–
are morally neutral rather than intrinsically evil, and
whether violence is good or bad is a matter of
intention. (The analogy is to a surgeon, who cuts into
the body, thus injuring it, in order to make it
better/healthier.)
 2) Christ is concerned with the political order of
man, and intends for his agents on earth, kings, popes,
bishops, to establish on earth a Christian Republic
that was a “single, universal, transcendental state’
ruled by Christ through the lay and clerical
magistrates he endowed with authority.
 Pope Urban II calls for a crusade on November 27,
1095.
 It started as a widespread pilgrimage in western
Christendom and ended as a military expedition by
Roman Catholic Europe to regain the Holy Lands
taken in the Muslim conquests of the Levant (632–
661), ultimately resulting in the recapture of
Jerusalem in 1099.
 They also established the crusader states of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the
Principality of Antioch, and the County of Edessa.
 The Second Crusade (1145–1149) was started in
response to the fall of the County of Edessa the
previous year to the forces of Zengi, a Muslim
general/leader/prince/atabeg.
 The Second Crusade was announced by Pope
Eugene III, and was the first of the crusades to be led
by European kings, namely Louis VII of France and
Conrad III of Germany, with help from a number of
other European nobles.
 The armies of the two kings marched separately
across Europe. After crossing Byzantine territory
into Anatolia, both armies were separately defeated
by the Seljuq Turks. The main Western Christian
source, Odo of Deuil, and Syriac Christian sources
claim that the Byzantine emperor Manuel I
Komnenos secretly hindered the crusaders' progress,
particularly in Anatolia, where he is alleged to have
deliberately ordered Turks to attack them.
 Louis and Conrad and the remnants of their armies
reached Jerusalem and participated in 1148 in an illadvised attack on Damascus.
 The crusade in the east was a failure for the
crusaders and a great victory for the Muslims. It
would ultimately have a key influence on the fall of
Jerusalem and give rise to the Third Crusade at the
end of the 12th century.
 The Third Crusade (1189–1192), also known as The
Kings' Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders
to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin (Ṣalāḥ adDīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb).
 Led by Saladin, Egyptian and Syrian forces were
used to shrink the Christian states and recapture
Jerusalem in 1187.
 The campaign was largely successful, capturing the
important cities of Acre and Jaffa, and reversing most
of Saladin's conquests, but it failed to capture
Jerusalem.
 Spurred by religious zeal, King Henry II of England
and King Philip II of France (known as Philip
Augustus) ended their conflict with each other to
lead a new crusade.
 The death of Henry in 1189, however, meant the
English contingent came under the command of his
successor, King Richard I of England (known as
Richard the Lionheart, in French Cœur de Lion).
 The elderly Holy Roman Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa also responded to the call to arms,
leading a massive army across Anatolia, but he
drowned in a river in Asia Minor on June 10, 1190
before reaching the Holy Land.
 Spurred by religious zeal, King Henry II of England
and King Philip II of France (known as Philip
Augustus) ended their conflict with each other to
lead a new crusade.
 The death of Henry in 1189, however, meant the
English contingent came under the command of his
successor, King Richard I of England (known as
Richard the Lionheart, in French Cœur de Lion).
 The elderly Holy Roman Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa also responded to the call to arms,
leading a massive army across Anatolia, but he
drowned in a river in Asia Minor on June 10, 1190
before reaching the Holy Land.
 On September 2, 1192, Richard the Lion-Hearted and
Saladin finalized a treaty granting Muslim control
over Jerusalem but allowing unarmed Christian
pilgrims and merchants to visit the city. Richard
leaves.
 It gets ugly from here on out.
 The Fourth Crusade (1202–04) was a Western
European armed expedition originally intended to
conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of
an invasion through Egypt.
 Instead, a sequence of events culminated in the
Crusaders sacking the city of Constantinople, the
capital of the Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire.
 The Venetians!
 By May 1202 the bulk of the crusader army was
collected at Venice, although with far smaller
numbers than expected: about 12,000 (4-5,000
knights and 8,000 foot soldiers) instead of 33,500.
 The Venetians had performed their part of the
agreement: there awaited 50 war galleys and 450
transports—enough for three times the assembled
army.
 The Venetians, under their aged and blind Doge
Dandolo, would not let the crusaders leave without
paying the full amount agreed to, originally 85,000
 The Venetians!
 Dandolo and the Venetians considered what to do
with the crusade. It was too small to pay its fee, but
disbanding the force gathered would harm Venetian
prestige and cause significant financial and trading
loss.
 Following the Massacre of the Latins of
Constantinople in 1182, the ruling Angelos dynasty
had expelled the Venetian merchant population with
the support of the Greek population.
 WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE A
VENETIAN?
 Well…
 Dandolo proposed that the crusaders pay their debts
by intimidating many of the local ports and towns
down the Adriatic, culminating in an attack on the
port of Zara in Dalmatia.
 The city had been dominated economically by
Venice throughout the 12th century but had rebelled
in 1181 and allied itself with King Emeric of
Hungary.
 In 1202, Pope Innocent III, despite wanting to secure
papal authority over Byzantium, forbade the
crusaders of Western Christendom from committing
any atrocious acts against their Christian neighbors.
 However, this letter was concealed from the bulk of
the army who arrived at Zara on November 10-11,
1202, and the attack proceeded.
 The citizens of Zara made reference to the fact that
they were fellow Catholics by hanging banners
marked with crosses from their windows and the
walls of the city, but nevertheless the city fell on
November 24, 1202 after a brief siege.
 When Innocent III heard of the sack, he sent a letter
to the crusaders excommunicating them and
ordering them to return to their holy vows and head
for Jerusalem.
 Out of fear that this would dissolve the army, the
leaders of the crusade decided not to inform their
followers of this.
 Eventually, Innocent reconsidered his decision
because the crusaders were blackmailed by the
Venetians.
 In January 1203, en route to Jerusalem, the majority
of the crusader leadership entered into an agreement
with the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos to divert
to Constantinople and restore his deposed father as
emperor.
 The intention of the crusaders was then to continue
to the Holy Land with promised Byzantine financial
and military assistance. On June 23, 1203 the main
crusader fleet reached Constantinople.
 Smaller contingents continued to Acre.
 In August 1203, following clashes outside
Constantinople, Alexios Angelos was crowned as coEmperor (Alexios IV Angelos) with crusader
support.
 However, in January 1204, he was deposed by a
popular uprising in Constantinople.
 The Western crusaders were no longer able to
receive their promised payments, and when Alexios
IV was murdered on February 8, 1204, the crusaders
and Venetians decided on the outright conquest of
Constantinople.
 HOW ELSE ARE THEY GONNA GIT DER MONEY?!?
 The crusaders inflicted a savage sacking on
Constantinople for three days, during which many
ancient Greco-Roman and medieval Byzantine
works of art were either stolen or destroyed.
 The magnificent Library of Constantinople was
destroyed.
 Many of the civilians of the city were slaughtered,
raped and looted.
 Despite their oaths and the threat of
excommunication, the crusaders ruthlessly and
systematically violated the city's churches and
monasteries, destroying, defiling, or stealing all they
could lay hands on; nothing was spared.
 Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
 Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
 During the middle of the 15th century, the Latin
Church (Roman Catholic Church) tried to organize a
new crusade aimed at restoring the Eastern Roman
or Byzantine Empire, which was gradually being
torn down by the advancing Ottoman Turks.
 The attempt failed, however, as the vast majority of
Greek civilians and a growing part of their clergy
refused to recognize and accept the short-lived nearunion of the Churches of East and West signed at the
Council of Florence and Ferrara by the Ecumenical
patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople.
 The Greek population, reacting to the Latin
conquest, believed that the Byzantine civilization
that revolved around the Orthodox faith would be
more secure under Ottoman Islamic rule.
 Overall, religious-observant Greeks preferred to
sacrifice their political freedom and political
independence in order to preserve their faith's
traditions and rituals in separation from the Roman
See.
 The Children's Crusade is the name given to a
disastrous Crusade by European Christians to expel
Muslims from the Holy Land said to have taken
place in 1212.
 The traditional narrative is probably exaggerated
from some factual and mythical notions of the
period including visions by a French or German boy,
an intention to peacefully convert Muslims in the
Holy Land to Christianity, bands of children
marching to Italy, and children being sold into
slavery.
 Crusader Motivations
 There were as many different reasons for crusading
as there were crusaders, but the single most common
reason was piety.
 To crusade was to go on pilgrimage, a holy journey
of personal salvation.
 Whether that also meant giving up virtually
everything and willingly facing death for God,
bending to peer or family pressure, indulging blood
lust without guilt, or seeking adventure or gold or
personal glory depended entirely on who was doing
the crusading.
 Who Went on Crusade
 People from all walks of life, from peasants and
laborers to kings and queens, answered the call.
Women were encouraged to give money and stay
out of the way, but some went on crusade anyway.
 The Number of Crusades
 Historians have numbered eight expeditions to the
Holy Land, though some lump the 7th and 8th
together for a total of seven crusades.
 However, there was a steady stream of armies from
Europe to the Holy Land, so it is nearly impossible to
distinguish separate campaigns.
 Crusading Orders
 Two important military orders were established in
the early 12th century: the Knights Hospitaller and
the Knights Templar. Both were monastic orders
whose members took vows of chastity and poverty,
yet they were also militarily trained. Their primary
purpose was to protect and aid pilgrims to the Holy
Land.
 Both orders did very well financially, particularly the
Templars, who were notoriously arrested and disbanded
by Philip IV of France in 1307.
 The Hospitallers outlasted the Crusades and continue, in a
much-altered form, to this day. Other orders were
established later, including the Teutonic Knights.
 Content courtesy of:
 http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2014/
05/13/you-thought-the-crusades-were-evil-until-youread-this/
 http://www.usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh315/crusa
des_timeline.htm
 http://www.swabiateutonic.org/historyofteutonicknights.htm