THECRUSADES

ChristopherTyerman

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Frontispiece: An armored knight from the time

of theCrusades is depicted in this detail from a

twelfth-century fresco decorating the Chapel of

St.Gilles,inMontoire-sur-le-Loir,France.

ForP.P.A.B.

•

CONTENTS•

PrefaceListofMapsIntroduction

ONEDefinition

TWOCrusadesintheEasternMediterranean

THREE Crusades in theWestFOUR The Impact oftheCrusadesFIVEHolyWar

SIX TheBusinessoftheCrossSEVENHolyLands

ConclusionFurtherReading

ChronologyPictureCredits

PREFACE•

WHILE THE EIGHTH-

CENTURY Scottishphilosopher andhistorianDavidHumethought the Crusades“the most signal andmost durablemonument of human

folly that has yetappeared in any ageor nation,” headmitted they“engrossed theattention of Europeand have ever sinceengrossed thecuriosity ofmankind.” Thereasons for this arenot hard to find. Thetwin themes of

judgment on pastviolence andfascination with itscauses have ensuredthe survival of theCrusades as morethan an inert subjectfor antiquarians.Since Pope Urban II(1088–99) in 1095answered a call formilitaryhelpfromtheByzantine emperor

Alexius I Comnenus(1081–1118), bysummoning a vastarmy to fight in thename of God toliberate easternChristianity andrecovertheHolyCityof Jerusalem, therehave been fewperiods when theconsequences of thisact have not gripped

minds andimaginations,primarily in westernsociety butincreasingly, sincethe nineteenthcentury, amongcommunities thathave seen themselvesasheirstothevictimsof this form ofreligious violence.With the history of

theCrusades,moderninterest iscompounded byspurious topicalityand inescapablefamiliarity.Ideological warfareand the pathology ofacceptable communalviolence areembedded in thehistorical experienceof civilization.

Justification for warandkillingforanoblecause never cease tofind modernmanifestations. TheCrusades present aphenomenon sodramaticandextremein aspiration andexecution and yet sorebarbativetomodernsensibilities, that theycannot fail to move

bothasastoryandasan expression of asociety remote intimeandattitudesyetapparently soabundantlyrecognizable. Spreadover five hundredyearsandacrossthreecontinents, theCrusades may nothave definedmedieval Christian

Europe, yet theyprovide a mostextraordinary featurethatretainsthepowerto excite, appall, anddisturb. They remainone of the greatsubjects of Europeanhistory.What followsis an attempt toexplainwhy.Thephenomenonof

violence justified by

religious faith hasebbed and flowed,sometimes nearingthecenter,sometimesretreating to themargins of historicaland contemporaryconsciousness. WhenI was asked to writethisshortintroductionto theCrusades, holywar, Christian orotherwise, was not

high on the public orpoliticalagenda.NowwhenIhavefinished,it is. So this workconforms to apatterntraced in whatfollows, of historicalstudy relating tocurrent events. Myviews on thatrelationship will, Ihope, become clearenough.What remain

hidden except to thelynx-eyed are thedebts to many otherscholars, colleagues,and friends fromwhomIhavelearntsomuch and shouldhave remembered somuch more. Theymust forgive acollectivethanks.Thefaults in this libellusare mine not theirs.

The dedication is avery smallrecompense forincalculablemunificence ofadvice, support, andfriendship over somany years, in darkdaysaswellasbrightevenings ofexhausting butinexhaustiblehospitality.

C.J.T.OXFORD

MAY22,2005

LISTOFMAPS•

MedievalEuropeandItsFrontiers

Europe and theMediterranean:Christianity and ItsNon-ChristianNeighbors

TheNear East in theTwelfthCentury

The Crusader StatesofOutremer

The SpanishReconquista

TheBaltic

The Aegean in the

Thirteenth andFourteenthCenturies

The Castles ofOutremer

Pope Urban II,

immortalized here in

a sculpture in

Champagne, France,

appealed for a

crusadetotheEast.

INTRODUCTION

BETWEEN 1189 AND 1191, acosmopolitan army ofwesterninvadersbesiegedthePalestinian coastal city ofAcre, modern Akko. Their

camp resembled the trenchesof the Western Front duringthe First World War, fetid,disease-ridden, anddangerous. One storycirculated to boost moraleconcernedtheheroicdeathinbattleafewyearsearlierofaknight from Touraine inFrance, Jakelin deMailly. AmemberoftheMilitaryOrderofKnightsTemplar,asoldierwhohadtakenreligiousvows

of poverty, chastity, andobedience in order to devotehis life to protectingChristiansandtheirconquestsinSyriaandPalestine,Jakelinhad been killed fighting aMuslim raiding party inGalilee on May 1, 1187. Indescribingwhatproved tobeamassacre of theChristians,thestoryhadJakelin fightingon alone, hopelesslyoutnumberedandsurrounded.

The chronicler who recordedthe story before 1192,possibly an Englishman andcertainly a veteran of thesiege of Acre, is worthquotinginfull:

HewasnotafraidtodieforChrist.Atlonglast,crushedrather than conquered byspears,stonesandlances,hesank to the ground andjoyfully passed to heaven

with the martyr’s crown,triumphant. Itwas indeedagentle death with no placeforsorrow,whenoneman’sswordhadconstructedsucha great crown for himselffrom the crowd laid allaroundhim.Death is sweetwhen the victor liesencircled by the impiouspeoplehehasslainwithhisvictoriousrighthand…Theplace where he fought was

covered with the stubblewhich the reapers had leftstandingwhen theyhadcutthe grain shortly before.Such a great number ofTurks had rushed in toattack,andthisonemanhadfoughtforsolongagainstsomany battalions, that thefield in which they stoodwas completely reduced todust and there was not atraceofthecroptobeseen.

It is said that there weresome who sprinkled thebody of the deadmanwithdust and placed dust ontheir heads, believing thatthey would draw couragefrom the contact. In fact,rumorhasitthatonepersonwas moved with morefervor than the rest.He cutoff the man’s genitals, andkeptthemsafeforbegettingchildren so that even when

dead theman’smembers—ifsuchathingwerepossible—would produce an heirwithcourageasgreatashis.

Except possibly for thesuggestion of sexualfetishism, this story, whichwouldnothaveconvincedallwho heard it by any means,represented a standard pieceof crusade propaganda.Crusading, fighting for God

in return for a promise ofsalvation, placed a premiumoncourage,physicalprowess,martial skill, and religiousconviction. As such, littleseparated it fromother formsoforganizedviolence.Yetthetale of Jakelin de Maillyemphasized certain featuresparticularly characteristic ofthe Crusades, especially thebelief or assertion thatviolence for the faith will

earn heavenly reward. Thekiller, already a professedreligious, becomes a holyman, a martyr, a witness forhis God. Such is the hero’sspiritual potency that hisphysical remains retain apowerful material charge toconferhishumanqualities toothers, even posthumouslythrough his sexual organs.His horrible, violent deathwas interpreted as “gentle”

and “sweet”; his memoryprovided inspiration; hisremains were thought toconvey virtue. Death was acompletion but noconclusion.On the face of it, few

mentalities—enthusiastic forviolence,fixedonanafterlife—could be less accessible tomodern observers in thewesternculturaltraditionthanthis. Yet no aspect of

Christian medieval historyenjoys clearer modernrecognition than theCrusades, nor has beenmoresubject to egregiousdistortion. Most of whatpassesinpublicasknowledgeof the Crusades is eithermisleading or false. TheCrusades were not solelywars against Islam inPalestine. They were notchiefly conducted by land-

hungry younger sons, norwere they part of some earlyattempt to impose westerneconomic hegemony on theworld. More fundamentally,they did not represent anaberration from Christianteaching. Nonetheless,interestandinventionexistastwo sides of the samehistorical coin. That in partexplains why the world ofJakelin de Mailly and his

eulogist has not beenconsigned to the sameobscurity as that ofmedievalscholasticsorflagellants;thatand the drama of the eventsthemselves.Jakelin’sdeathina desperate and foolhardyskirmish in theGalilean hillsmay arouse only modestinterest.Buthispresencetwothousand miles from hishomeland; the cause forwhich he swore religious

vows, fought, and died; theregion for which he battled;and thememorable historicalfigures drawn into theconflict in which he servedhave ensured his endeavorandsacrificecanstill touchanerve. That is the excuse forthisbook.Theword“crusade,”anon-

medieval Franco-Spanishhybrid only popularized inEnglish since the eighteenth

century, has entered theAnglo-American language asa synonym for a good causevigorously pursued, frompacific Christian evangelismto militant temperance.However floridly andmisleadingly romantic, theimage of mailed knightsbearing crosses on surcoatsandbanners,fightingfortheirfaith under an alien sun,occupies a familiar niche in

thefaçadeofmodernwesternperceptions of the past.Despite, or perhaps becauseof, its lack of context, itremains the indelible imageof crusading in popularculture, shared even by thesculptorsofthelatePresidentAssad of Syria. Iconographyis never innocent. Assad’sDamascus Saladin isdefeating the Christians attheirownimperialistgameas

surely as the Ladybird’sSaladin and Richard I areplaying out some nineteenth-century cultural minuet.Polemicists and politiciansknow—orshouldknow—thatto invoke the Crusades is tostir deep cultural myths,assumptions, and prejudices,a fact recognized by PopeJohn Paul II’s apology toJews, Muslims, and EasternOrthodox Christians for the

intolerance and violenceinflictedbyCatholicwarriorsof the cross. Although it isdifficult to see how evenChrist’s Vicar on earth canapologizeforeventsinwhichhe did not participate, overwhichhehadnocontrol,andfor which he bore noresponsibility, thisintellectually muddledgesture acknowledged thecontinuedinherentpotencyof

crusading, a story that canstill move, outrage, andinflame. One of the groupsled by the fundamentalistreligious terrorist Usama binLaden was known as “TheWorld Islamic Front forCrusade against Jews andCrusaders.” To understandmedieval crusading for itselfand to explain its survivalmayberegardedasanurgentcontemporary task, one for

which historians must takeresponsibility. To this dualstudy of history andhistoriography, of theCrusades and what could becalled their post-history, thisisabriefintroduction.

This statue of Saladin,

commissioned by Damascus,

Syria,in1992,depictshimasthe

victor of the Battle of Hattin; at

hissideareaninfantrymananda

sufi—swordandfaith.

The violent legacy of the

Crusades was apparent when

Pope John Paul II issued an

apology from the Vatican to

Jews, Muslims, and Eastern

OrthodoxChristians.

Casual modernacquaintance with theCrusadesstemsfromthewidedissemination of crusadingmotifs from the earlynineteenth century, a ratherprecious, sentimental vision

ofaninventedmedievalpast,as in Walter Scott’s popularand influential Ivanhoe andThe Talisman, the latteractually set during the ThirdCrusade. A similarsentimentality infectedcontinental responses;romantic imagesof crusadersbecame a stock in trade forartistsandpoets.Theculturalfamiliarityonwhichtheforceof these I works relied was

maintained into the twentiethand twenty-first centurieschiefly by the popularmediaofHollywood,television,andimaginative literature, not allof it describing itself asfiction. Crossovers betweenhistory and entertainment atleastsuggestamarket,ifonlyfor what the great Americancrusader scholar of the firsthalf of the twentieth century,J. La Monte, forensically

described as “worthlesspseudo-historicaltrash.”

Inthenineteenthcentury,artists

and writers, including Scottish

novelist, Sir Walter Scott,

romanticized the Crusades with

aninventedhistory.

Crusading has left aphysical imprint on Europe.Most obviously, impressivesites associated withcrusading or the militaryordersremain,suchasAiguesMortes in the Rhone Delta,

from where Louis IX ofFranceembarkedforEgyptin1248, or the fourteenth-century headquarters of theTeutonic Knights atMarienburg in Prussia (nowMalbork in Poland). Somereminders invoke a sombermessage: the plaque atClifford’s Tower in Yorkcommemorates the Jewswhodied there in March 1190,victims by murder and

suicide of Yorkshirecrusaders. More intimateevocation of personalresponses and the strenuousconviction of individualsthirtytofiftygenerationsagocanbefoundinquietcornerslike the eleventh-centurychurch at Bosham,Hampshire, on the edge ofChichester Harbor, whosegreat chancel arch sawHarold Godwineson on his

way across the Channel to afateful meeting with DukeWilliam of Normandy in1064 and earned a place intheBayeuxTapestry.Crossesetched deep in the stone ofthedoorjambsandacrossofJerusalem more lightlyscratched on a nearby pillar,whether marks of anxioushope on departure or ofthankfulreliefatasafereturn,speak directly of a physical

ideal, witness in almost theultimatedegreeofdevotiontoa belief in the tangibility ofthe divine that allowedordinary, faithful laymen,through their own action andthe material relics of theirGodandHisSaints, to touchParadise. That identicalcrosses can also be seenincised on the walls of theChurchoftheHolySepulchreinJerusalememphasizesboth

the startling reality of theexperience of pilgrims andcrusaders and the gulfbetween their age and ourown. Yet, such memorialsleaveatraceinthemind.

AscenefromSirWalterScott’s

novel Ivanhoe is illustrated in

The Abduction of Rebecca, an

1846 painting by Eugène

Delacroix. Saracen slaves are

kidnappingthenovel’sheroine.

Depicted here in the Bayeux

Tapestry,futurekingofEngland

Harold Godwineson crosses the

EnglishChannel on a diplomatic

missiontoNormandy.

Visible reminders arestrewn across the modernlandscape. In London alone,without the Crusades therewould be no shopping inKnightsbridge, no cricket atSt. John’s Wood, no law at

the Temple—all places thatderive their names from themedieval landlords of thesesuburbs, the Military Ordersof the Temple and of theHospitalofSt.John,religiousorders originally establishedtosuccorandprotectpilgrimsto Jerusalem in theaftermathof its conquest by the firstcrusaders in 1099. Linguisticand material survivals arematched by a more urgent

and in some cases moreinsidious recognition thathaswoven the memory ofcrusading into some of themore intractable modernpolitical problems, the Arab—Israeli conflict, responsesto Terrorism, religious inter-faith conflict, the origins ofwestern racism and anti-Semitism, and the nature ofandreactiontoEuropeanandAmerican political and

culturalimperialism.Yet here lurks a paradox.

The continuing popular andpolitical resonance ofcrusading feeds on anhistorical phenomenon that,bothinitsowntimeandlater,haslackedobjectiveprecisionin definition, practice,perception, or approval. IntheMiddleAgesthereexistedno single word for what arenow known as the Crusades.

While those who took thecross were described ascrucesignati—people (notexclusivelymale)signedwiththe cross—their activitiestended to be described byanalogy, euphemism,metaphor, or generality:peregrinatio, pilgrimage; viaor iter,wayor journey;crux,literally cross; negotium,business. This allowed for aflexibility of target and

ideologythatwasmatchedbya concentration in canon law(thelawofthechurch)onthebehavior of the crusader andthe implications of thevarious privileges associatedwith the activity rather thanany general theoreticalformula specifically defininga legal concept of a crusade.Thusattheheartofthisformof Christian warfare lay apossibly convenient

ambiguityofideasandactionthatspawnedawidediversityofresponses.Thewarsofthecross, initiated to regainJerusalem for Christianity in1095 and extended over thenext few generations toencompass a wide variety ofviolence against the CatholicChurch’s perceived externaland internal foes, have beenunderstood by participants,contemporaries, and later

observersinaproteanvarietyofways.By turns, crusading has

been variously interpreted. IthasbeenpresentedaswarfaretodefendabeleagueredFaithor the ultimate expression ofsecular piety. Alternatively,some have regarded it as adecisive ecclesiasticalcompromisewithbasesecularhabits; a definingcommitmentof thechurch to

accommodate the spiritualaspirationsofthelaity.Astheadmiredpinnacleofambitionfor a ruling military elite,crusading is portrayed as anagent as well as symbol ofreligious, cultural, or ethnicidentityorevensuperiority;avehicle for personal orcommunal aggrandizement,commercial expansion, orpolitical conquest. Morenarrowly, the Crusades

appearasanexpressionoftheauthority of the papacy inimposing order anduniformity withinChristendom as well assecuringitsexternalfrontiers.Conflicting assessments ofthe Crusades have describedthem as manifestations ofreligious love, by Christiansfor fellow believers and byGod for His people; anexperiment in European

colonialism; an example ofrecrudescent western racism;an excuse and incentive forreligious persecution, ethniccleansing, and acts ofbarbarism; or a noble cause.Steven Runciman, the best-known and most influentialanglophoneCrusadehistorianof the twentieth century,imperishably condemned thewholeenterpriseas“onelongactofintoleranceinthename

of God which is the sinagainsttheHolyGhost.”Even shorn of present

prejudices andpreoccupations,thehistoryofthe Crusades throws upconcerns central to allsocieties, from the forgingofidentities through thecommunal force of sharedfaithandtheuseandabuseoflegitimate violence to thenature of political authority

and organized religion.Crusading exemplifies theexploitation of the fear ofwhat sociologists call “theother,” alien peoples orconcepts ranged againstwhich social groups can findor be given cohesion:Communism and Capitalism;Democracy and Fascism;Christians and non-Christians; Whites and Non-Whites;ThemandUs.There

canbenoindifferencetosuchissues.That iswhy the studyof theCrusades possesses animportance beyond theconfines of academicscholarship. Equally, therecan be no summoning of thepast to take sides in thepresent.Plunderinghistorytodeliver modern indictmentsserves no rational or benignpurpose. To observe the pastthrough the lens of the

present invites delusion; sotoo does ignoring theexistence of that lens.However, the burden ofunderstanding lies on us toappreciate the world of thepast, not on the past toprovide ours with facileprecedents or good stories,although of the latter theCrusadessupplyplenty.

“Atlastmydreamcomestrue.”

Thiscartoon isPunch’s response

to the entry of General Allenby

intoJerusaleminDecember1917,

as the Union Jack flies over the

Jaffa Gate. In actuality, Allenby

carefully avoided any overt

demonstration of imperialist or

Christian triumph, making his

entryonfoot.

A fifteenth-century

depiction shows the

Church of the Holy

Sepulchre in

Jerusalem. The Holy

Sepulchre, enclosed

within the Edicule

(small house) had

been the destination

ofmanypilgrimsand

crusaders over the

previous four

centuries.

ONE

Definition

AT A COUNCIL OF THE CHURCH

HELD at Clermont in theFrench Auvergne inNovember1095adecreewasissued that marked a newbeginning in western

Christianity’s use of war tofurtheritsreligiousmission.

Whoever for devotionalone, not to gain honor ormoney,goestoJerusalemtoliberate the Church of Godcan substitute this journeyforallpenance.

This decree did not inventChristianviolence.Nordid itdefine precise terms of a

revolution in thought orpractice, or determine howfuture generations wouldemploy the precedent.Coming half way through apreaching tour of Franceconducted by Pope Urban II(1088–95), the Clermontassembly was bestrememberednot for the legalauthority granted by thedecree but for the pope’ssermon at the end of the

council on November 27.What the pope said is notknown. Witnesses and latercommentators subsequentlydepicted him as delivering arousing call to arms to thefighting classes of westernEurope to recover the HolyCity of Jerusalem, insistingthat this was no ordinary actoftemporalwarfarebutataskenjoined on the faithful byGod Himself, a message

echoed back in the cries of“Deus lo volt!”—“God willsit!”—said to have greetedUrban’swords. To provide afocus for commitment and asign of distinction, Urbaninstituted the ceremonialgranting of crosses to thosewho had sworn to undertakethe Jerusalem journey. Thustheybecame“signedwiththecross,”crucesignati.

This fifteenth-century image

showsPopeUrbanIIpreachingto

kings and knights, urging a

crusadetotheHolyLand.

Over the following centurywriters in western Europeanvernacularsbegantodescribethese wars in similar terms—crozeia, crozea, or evencrozada in early thirteenth-century southern French(langue d’oc). The

appropriation ofChristianity’smost numinoussymbol,asbadge,banner,andtalisman, followed naturallyfromthepope’sconceptionofthe enterprise to liberate “theHoly City of Christ,embellished by his passionand resurrection.” Observersandveteransoftheenterpriseunderstood the pope to havecalledforChrist-likesacrificein obedience to the gospel

command: “If any man willcome after me, let him denyhimself,andtakeuphiscross,and follow me” (Matthew16:24). All Hebrew accountsof the 1096 massacres ofRhineland Jews by thepassing Christian armiesemphasized that the butchersworethesignofthecross.The memory of Urban’s

rhetoricatClermontplayedacentralroleinhowtheevents

promptedbyhisspeechwerelater portrayed, providing aconvenient start to narrativesof the startling consequencesof the pope’s preaching.Urban’s decree explicitlyproclaimed a holy war inwhich the effort of thecampaign, including thefighting and the inevitableslaughter, could be regardedas equivalent to strenuousperformance of penance

provided it had beenundertaken devoutly. Thecausemayhavebeenseenasjust, but that was not thepoint.Thiswasanactoftotalself-abnegating faithdemandedbyGod,hence thelanguage of unrealisticabsolutesthatfailedtomatchmilitary, social, andpsychologicalreality,anidealto inspire and against whichdeeds could be judged. The

Clermont decree instituted aholy war, its cause andmotive religious, an act ofChristiancharityfor“theloveof God and their neighbor”(the eastern Christians). Aswell as combining violencewith a transcendent moralimperative, Urban appealedto a form of “primitivereligiousnostalgia”embodiedin the ambiguously liminalHoly City of Jerusalem, lost

to Christendom since itscapture by the Muslims in638 yet central to Christianimagination as the scene ofthe Crucifixion andResurrection.Here,accordingto Christian texts familiarthroughtheMassandliturgy,earth touched heaven. In ashort space, the Clermontdecree identified reasons forthe massive response: thecertainties of faith; fear of

damnation; temporal self-image; material, social, andsupernatural profit; theattraction of warfare for amilitary aristocracy; anunequivocally good cause;and an iconic objective ofloud resonance in theimaginativeworldofwesternChristians. It proved to be aformula of sustained powerfor the rest of the MiddleAges.

What we today call acrusadecouldbedescribedasa war answering God’scommand, authorized by alegitimateauthority,thepope,who, by virtue of the powerseenasvestedinhimasVicarofChrist,identifiedthewar’sobject and offered to thosewho undertook it fullremission of the penalties ofconfessedsinsandapackageofrelatedtemporalprivileges,

including church protectionof family and property,immunity from law suits andinterest repayments on debt.The beneficiary earned thesegrants by swearing a vowsymbolized in a ritualadoption of a cross, blessedby a priest and worn on therecipient’s clothing, the vowoftenbeingcouched in termsparallel to those for apilgrimage. The duration of

the spiritual and temporalprivilegeswasdeterminedbythefulfillmentofthevow,byabsolutionorbydeath.Thosedyinginbattleorotherwiseinfulfillmentoftheirvowcouldexpect eternal salvation andtoberegardedasmartyrs.Atevery stage, analogieswith aquasi-monastic commitmentwere drawn, associating theactivity with what remainedthe ideal conception of the

perfectChristianspirituallife.Although details of theoperation of the vow and itsassociated privilegesdevelopedover the followingcentury or more to cover amultiplicity of political andecclesiastical concerns, thefirst appearance and originaljustification for such a holywarin1095wastherecoveryof Jerusalem from Muslimrule. Thereafter, the Holy

Land retained a primacy inrhetoric,imagination,and,formanycenturies,ideology.

NumberingtheCrusadesHistorians organize the pastto help them make sense oftheevidence.Indoingsotheyrun the risk of becomingimprisoned by their ownartifice. Between 1095 and,say, 1500 there were scoresof military operations that

attracted the privilegesassociated with the wars ofthecross.Yetonlyafewlaterbecame known by a number,all of them aimed atMuslimtargets in and around Syriaand Palestine in the easternMediterranean. Obviously,the nobles, knights, footsoldiers, unarmed pilgrims,and hangers-on whoansweredUrbanII’sappealin1095–96 did not know they

were embarking on the firstof anything; they were toldtheireffortswere inauniquecause. Subsequent eventsaltered perceptions. Thepromoters of the nextcomparable easterncampaign, in 1146–49,invoked the precedent of1095–96,castingintoshadowsmaller expeditions that hadembarkedtoaidtheChristiancause in the east in the

interim. Thus, in the eyes oflater scholars, the 1146crusade became the SecondCrusade. Subsequentnumbering followed suit,attached only to general,large-scale internationalassaults intendedtoreachtheHoly Land. Hence theinclusion in the canon of theFourth Crusade (1202–24)that planned to attack Egypt,although getting no further

than Constantinople. Othercrusades are defined byobjective, location,participants,ormotive.Hencethe Albigensian Crusadesdescribe the wars againstreligious heretics in southernFrance around Albi between1209 and 1229. The BalticCrusades were campaignslaunched against local pagantribes of the region for twoandahalf centuries from the

mid-twelfth century. ThePeasants’ (1096), Children’s(1212), and Shepherds’(1251, 1320) Crusades speakfor themselves, sociallypigeon-holed by historians’(andcontemporary)snobbery.The wars directed from thethirteenth century againstpapal enemies in Europe arecalled, somewhatjudgmentally, “Political,” asif all crusades, like all wars,

werenotpolitical.ThedozensoflessercrusadestotheHolyLand not deemed large orglamorous enough haveremained unnumbered. Toadd to the confusion, evenwithin the canon, historianshave disagreed over somenumbers attached to HolyLand crusades in thethirteenth century. Some seeFrederick II of Germany’scrusade of 1228–29 that

briefly restored Jerusalem asthe Sixth Crusade; others asthelastcampaignoftheFifthCrusade summoned in 1213.Louis IX of France’sEgyptian campaign of 1248-50 (the Sixth or Seventhdepending on the view takenof Frederick II) and hiscampaign to Tunis in 1270(theEighth orNinth) are notnow generally described bynumber. Such games are not

new. In the early eighteenthcenturysomehistoriansstuckto five (1096, 1146, 1190,1217-29, and 1248) whileothers counted eight. Mostmodern historians, content tonumber crusades until theFifth (beginning in 1213),thereafter dispense withnumbering.

Pilgrimsapproachthe holycity

of Jerusalem in this 1683

engraving by French artist Alain

ManessonMallet.Thecrusadeas

a penitential exercise was

intimately linked to the practice

ofpilgrimage.

“The Four Leaders

of the First

Crusade,” as this

nineteenth-century

engraving is entitled,

were: Godfrey of

Bouillon, first

crusader to rule

Jerusalem;Raymond,

Count of Toulouse;

Bohemond I; and

Bohemond’s nephew

Tancred.

TWO

CrusadesintheEasternMediterranean

TheFirstCrusade,1095-99BETWEEN 1095ANDTHEENDofthe Middle Ages, westernEuropeans fought or planned

wars broadly understood asbeingindefenseorpromotionof their religion throughoutthe easternMediterranean, inthe Iberian peninsula, theBaltic, and withinChristendom itself. Yet nocampaign rivaled the first inimpact or memory.Contemporaries andsubsequent generations havebeen astonished and movedby the exploits of the armies

and fleets from westernEurope that forced their wayinto the Near East between1096 and 1099 to captureJerusalemindistantPalestine.Excited western intellectualsemployed the language oftheology: for one, “thegreatest miracle since theResurrection”;foranother,“anew way of salvation,”almost a renewal of God’scovenantwithHispeople.

Theexpeditionaroseoutofa specific social, religious,ecclesiastical, and politicalcontext.WesternEuropewasheld together by a militaryaristocracy whose powerrested on control of localresources by force andinheritance as much as bycivil law. The availability oflarge numbers of armsbearers, nobles and theirretinues,withsufficientfunds

or patronage to undertakesuch an expedition, wasmatched by an awareness ofthe sinfulness of theircustomary activities and adesireforpenance.Forthem,holy violence was familiarand Jerusalem possessedoverwhelming numinousresonance. The invitationfrom the eastern Christianemperor of Byzantium(Constantinople), Alexius I

Comnenus to Pope Urbansuitedthenewpapalpolicyofasserting supremacy overboth Church and Statedeveloped over the previoushalf century. An earlierschemebyPopeGregoryVII(1073–85) to lead an armyeastwards to Jerusalem hadcometonothingin1074.Thistime, Urban II, already asponsor of war against theMuslims in Spain, seized on

the opportunity to promotepapal authority in temporalaffairs. From its inception,crusading represented apractical expression of papalideology, leadership, andpower.The opportunity was no

accident. Alexius I had beenrecruiting western knightsandmercenaries for years.Ausurper, he needed militarysuccess to shore up his

domestic position. The deathin 1092 of Malik Shah,Turkish sultan of Baghdad,was followed by thedisintegrationofhisempireinSyria, Palestine, and Iraq.ThisofferedAlexiusachanceto restore Byzantine controloverAsiaMinorandnorthernSyria lost to the Turks sincetheir victory over theByzantines at Manzikert in1071. For this he needed

western troops. For politicalconvenience thepopewasanobvious and ready ally tochoose.Oncehehadreceivedthe Byzantine ambassadorsearly in 1095, Urbantransformed their request formilitary aid into a campaignof religious revivalism, itsjustification couched incosmological andeschatological terms. Thepope himself led the

recruitment drive with apreaching tour of hishomeland, France, betweenAugust 1095 and September1096thatreacheditsdefiningmoment at Clermont. Withthe kings of France andGermany excommunicated,thekingofEngland,WilliamII Rufus, in dispute with thepope, and the Spanishmonarchs preoccupied withtheir own Muslim frontier,

the pope concentrated on thehigher nobility, the dukes,counts, and lords, whilecasting his net wide.Recruitment stretched fromsouthern Italy and Sicily toLombardy, across greatswathes of France fromAquitaine and Provence toNormandy,Flanders and intothe Low Countries, westernGermany, the Rhineland, theNorth Sea region, and

Denmark, although bothLatin and Arabic sourcesdubbed them collectively as“Franks”—Franci, al-ifranji.A recent guess puts thenumber of fighting menreachingAsiaMinorin1096–97 at between fifty thousandand seventy thousand,excluding the non-combatantpilgrims who used themilitary exodus as protectionfortheirownjourneys.

Medieval Europe and Its

Frontiers

The first to set out for theagreed muster point of

Constantinople in spring andsummer1096includedforcesfromLombardy,northernandeastern France, theRhineland, and southernGermany. One of theirleaders was a charismaticPicard preacher known asPeter the Hermit. Somecontemporaries attributed thegenesis of the wholeenterprise to Peter, whoallegedly had been badly

treated by the Turkish rulersof Jerusalem when onpilgrimage some yearsearlier. Although unlikely tohave been the expedition’sinstigator, Peter certainlyplayed a significant role inrecruitment, possibly withpapal approval, andwas ableto muster a substantial armywithin three and a halfmonths of the council ofClermont. Elements of these

Franco-German contingentsconductedviciousanti-Jewishpogroms the length of theRhineland in May and June1096, before moving eastdown the Danube. Together,these armies have beendismissed as “the Peasants’Crusade.” This is amisnomer. Althoughcontaining fewer nobles andmounted knights than thelater armies, these forces

were far from the rabbles oflegend and contemporarypolemic. They possessedcohesion, funds, andleadership, managing tocomplete the long march toConstantinople largely intactand ingood time.Oneof thecommanders, Walter SansAvoir,wasnot,asmanyhaveassumed, “Penniless”—SansAvoirisaplace(intheSeinevalley), not a condition.

However, discipline provedhard to maintain. Aftercrossing the Bosporus intoAsia in August 1096, thesearmies were annihilated bythe Turks in September andOctober, only a matter ofweeks before the first of theprincely-led armies reachedConstantinople.Behind Peter’s

expeditionaryforcescamesixlarge armies from northern

France, Lorraine, Flanders,Normandy, Provence, andsouthern Italy. Although theProvençal leader, CountRaymond IV of Toulouse,hadbeenconsultedbyUrbanII in 1095-96 and traveledwith the pope’srepresentative, or legate,Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy,there was no singlecommander. The mosteffectivefieldgeneralproved

to be Bohemond of Taranto,head of the Normans fromsouthern Italy. Arriving atConstantinople betweenNovember 1096 and June1097, each leader waspersuaded or forced to offeranoathoffealtytoAlexiusI,who, in return, providedmoney, provisions, guides,and a regiment of troops.After the capture of Nicaea,capital of the Turkish

sultanate of Rum (AsiaMinor) in June 1097, thecampaign fell into fourdistinct phases. An arduousmarch across Asia Minor toSyria (June toOctober1097)thatsawamajorbutclose-runvictory over the Turks northof Doryleaum (July 1) wasfollowed by the siege andthen defense of Antioch innorthernSyria (October1097toJune1098).Onecontingent

from the main army underBaldwin of Boulogneestablished control of theArmenian city of Edessabeyond the Euphrates. Astheir difficulties proliferated,the depleted western armyincreasingly regardedthemselves as under thespecial care of God, a viewreinforced by visions, theapparently miraculousdiscovery at Antioch of the

Holy Lance that was said tohavepiercedChrist’s sideonthe Cross, and the victory afew days later (June 28,1098) over a numericallymuch superior Muslim armyfromMosul.FromJune1098until January 1099, theChristian army remained innorthern Syria, living off theland and squabbling over thespoils.The final march on

Jerusalem (January to June1099) was accompanied byreports ofmoremiracles andvisions, increasing the senseof the army being aninstrument of DivineProvidence. However, thecrusaders may have beensingle-minded, pious, andbrutal, but they were neitherstupid nor ignorant. Theiradvancehadtakenaccountoflocal politics at every stage,

notably the chronic divisionsamong their Muslimopponents that preventedunited resistance. Amicablenegotiations with theEgyptians, who hadthemselves conqueredJerusalem from the Turks in1098, lasted for two yearsbefore collapsing only a fewweeks before the westernersreached the Holy City. Thefinal assault on Jerusalem

(June to July 1099) wascrownedwithsuccessonJuly15; the ensuing massacreshocked Muslim and Jewishopinion. Western observersdescribed it approvingly, inapocalyptic terms. Theirtriumph secured by defeatingan Egyptian relief army atAscalon(August12),mostofthe surviving crusadersreturnedtothewest.By1100,as few as three hundred

knights were left in southernPalestine. Of the upwards ofone hundred thousand whohad left for Jerusalem in1096, and of those who hadcaught up with them duringthe following three years,perhaps no more thanfourteen thousand reachedJerusalem in June 1099.Urban II had been right: thewarofthecrosshadprovedaveryseverepenanceindeed.

This detail from an 1840 J.

Robert-Fleury painting shows

Baldwin of Boulogne

triumphantly entering the

Armenian city, Edessa, in

February1098.

TheTwelfthCenturyandtheSecondCrusade,1145-99After the First Crusade’sestablishment of bridgeheadsat Antioch in Syria andJerusalem in Palestine, fourprincipalitieswerecarvedout

on the Levantine mainland:the kingdom of Jerusalem(1099–1291); the principalityof Antioch (1098–1268); thecounty of Edessa (1098–1144); and the county ofTripoli (1102–1289).Collectively these territorieswereknownasOutremer,theland overseas. The easterncrusades were directed atexpanding, defending, orrestoring these conquests. In

the first half of the twelfthcentury, with Jerusalem inChristian hands, the pilgrimtrade exploded, whilecampaigning in the HolyLandbecamepartofchivalrictraining for some high-bornnobles as well as a martialaccessory to pilgrimage. Anumber of modestexpeditions helped conquerthe ports, plains, andimmediate hinterland of the

Syrio-Palestinian coast (forexample, those of KingSigurd of Norway, 1109-10;Fulk V of Anjou, 1120 and1128;andthedogeofVenice,1123-24). Increasingly, themodelofpenitentialwarwasused on other Christianfrontiers, such as Spain, andagainst papal enemies withinChristendom.

EuropeandtheMediterranean:

ChristianityandItsNon-Christian

Neighbors

However, the Holy Landretaineditsprimacyasagoalofholywar.TheprecedentoftheFirstCrusadeensuredthata new general summons toarms receivedanenthusiasticresponse. InDecember 1144,the Turkish warlord Zingi,ruler of Mosul and Aleppo

(1128–46), captured Edessa,massacring the Frankishinhabitants.Inresponse,PopeEugenius III (1145–53)launchedafreshcrusadewithabull(thatis,acircularletter,so called after its seal, orbulla that recited the heroicsof 1096–99 as well asexplaining the detailedprivileges available to thosewho took the cross. Incontrast with Urban II,

Eugenius eagerly enrolledmonarchs—Louis VII ofFrance(1137–80)andConradIII of Germany (1138–52).Recruiting lay chiefly in thehands of Abbot Bernard ofClairvaux (1090–1153), thedominant ecclesiastic andspiritual publicist of hisgeneration who conducted ahighly effective preachingtour of France, Flanders, andthe Rhineland in 1146-47.

Bernard’s message ofintolerance to Christ’senemies spilled over intomore anti-Jewish violence inthe Rhineland, although thiswas rather disingenuouslyblamed on a maverick monkcalled Rudolph. While thepope authorized separatecrusading wars in Spain,Bernard allowed a group ofdisgruntled Saxon nobles tocommute their Holy Land

vowstofightingontheBalticGerman/Slav frontier, whichtheydidwithout conspicuoussuccess or adherence to holywar in the summer of 1147.One substantial body ofrecruits from Frisia (anortheastern province ofGermany, bordering theNorth Sea), the Rhineland,Flanders, northern France,and England, traveling eastby sea, helped KingAlfonso

HenriquesofPortugal(1139–85) capture Lisbon from theMoors (October 24, 1147)after a brutal four-monthsiege. Some remained tosettle,butmostembarkedforthe Mediterranean thefollowing spring, somefindingserviceintheSpanishsiegeofTortosabut thebulkreachingtheHolyLand.

The Near East in the Twelfth

Century

There they found theremnantsofthegreatGermanand French land armies.Arriving close together atConstantinople in Septemberand October 1147 afterfollowing the land routethrough central Europe, eachwas defeated by Turkishforces in Asia Minor. The

large German force wasdestroyed nearDorylaeum inOctober, King Conradnarrowly escaping butwounded.TheFrench,havingearlierrejectedanofferofseatransportbyKingRogerIIofSicily,althoughbadlymauledinwesternAsiaMinor in thewinter of 1147-48, managedto reach the port of Adalia,onlyforLouisVIItoabandonhis infantry and sail directly

to Syria with an army ofofficers but few men. Thesubsequent Holy Landcampaign failed utterly.Conrad III managed toreconstructsomesortofarmyfrom the crusaders who hadsailed from Lisbon. WithLouis VII and the king ofJerusalem, Baldwin III(1143–63), he led an attackon Damascus (July 23-28,1148) that ended in a hasty

enforced withdrawal as theChristians lacked theresources for a prolongedsiegeortoprotectthemselvesfrom Muslim relief armies.The disaster led to bitterrecriminations andaccusations of treachery thatscandalized the west, castingthe whole idea of suchexpeditionsindoubt.

TheThirdCrusade,1188-92

The four decades after thefailed attack onDamascus in1148 witnessed a gradualerosion of the strategicposition of Outremer. Theunification of Syria underZengi’s son, Nur al-Din ofAleppo (1146–74), theconquest of Egypt by hisKurdish mercenarycommander Shirkuh (1168–69), and the creation of anEgypto-Syrian empire by

Shirkuh’s nephew, Saladin(1169–93), meant that by1186 Outremer wassurrounded. The rhetoric ofthis new, cohesive Muslimpower placed great emphasison jihad—war againstinfidels. This coincided withOutremer’s financialweakness,lackofwesternaidandadescent,inthekingdomofJerusalem,intodebilitationand political instability. The

royal succession passed inturn to a possible bigamist(Amalric 1163-74), a leper(Baldwin IV 1174-85), achild (Baldwin V 1185-86),andawoman(Sybil1186-90)and her unpopular arrivistehusband (Guy 1186-92). OnJuly 4, 1187, Saladinannihilated the army ofJerusalem at the battle ofHattin in Galilee. Within ayear almost all the Frankish

ports and castles hadsurrenderedorbeencaptured;Jerusalem fell on October 2,1187.Resistancewasreducedlargely to Tyre, Tripoli, andAntioch.

TheCrusaderStatesofOutremer

An illumination from a

fifteenth-century manuscript

depictsSaladin’sdecisivevictory

over King Guy of Jerusalem in

the 1187 Battle of the Horns of

Hattin,Syria.

The response in the westwasmassive.ByMarch1188,the kings of Germany,France, and England hadtaken thecrosswithmanyoftheir leading nobles. King

William II of Sicily had senta fleet east. Preaching andrecruitment had begun andcampaign strategies carefullydeveloped. A profits tax,known as the Saladin Tithe,had been instituted in FranceandtheBritishIsles.In1189,King Guy of Jerusalem,recently released fromSaladin’s captivity, began tobesiegethevitalportofAcre.For the next two years, this

became the focal point ofChristian military effort. Inthe same year fleets fromnorthern Europe began toarrive. In May 1189,FrederickBarbarossa,kingofGermany and Holy RomanEmperor, set out at the headof an army allegedly onehundred thousand strong.After successfully forcing apassagethroughtheunhelpfulByzantine Empire and the

hostile Turkish Anatolia,Frederick’s crusade ended intragic bathos when hedrowned trying to cross theRiver Saleph in Cilicia onJune 10, 1190. Demoralized,his huge army disintegrated,only a small rump reachingAcre.Although English and

French contingents begansailingeastwardsin1189,thekings did not embark until

1190, delayed by politicalfeuding over the successionto Henry II of England (d.July1189).Giventhedelicaterelationship caused by theEnglish king holdingextensivelandsasavassalofthe French crown, KingPhilip II of France (1180–1223) and the new king ofEngland, Richard I (1189–99), decided to traveltogether.Richard’sskillsasa

general and administrator ofmen,ships,andmaterialsandhisvastreservesofcashsoonelevated him to the centralroleinthecrusade.Deflectednotatallbyanti-Jewishriotsand massacres in Englishtowns,notablyYork,in1189-90,thekingsdepartedinJuly1190, making theirrendezvous in September atMessinainSicily,wheretheywintered.While Philip sailed

for Acre in March 1191,arriving on April 20,Richard’s larger forces wereblown off course to Cyprus.With elements in his armybeing mistreated by itsindependent Greek ruler,Richard took the opportunityto conquer the island in alightning campaign in May.Cyprusremained inChristianhands until 1571. Richardfinally arrived at Acre on

June 6, 1191.After a furthersixweeks’hardpounding,thecity surrendered on July 12.On July 31, Philip IIabandoned the crusade,pleading illness and pressingbusiness at home but clearlydiscomforted by Richard’sdominance. Most of hisfollowers showed what theythought of his action bystaying. After executinghundredsofMuslimprisoners

inhisimpatienceatSaladin’sprevarication overimplementing the Acresurrenderagreement,RichardbeganhismarchsouthtowardJerusalemonAugust22.ThePalestinewarof1191–

92 revolved around security.Since overwhelming victoryeluded both sides, the onlyresolutionlayinasustainablepoliticalagreement.RichardIused force to try to frighten

Saladinintorestoringthepre-1187 kingdom of Jerusalem.If diplomacy succeeded,battles and sieges becameunnecessary.Theconflictwasprolonged because neitherside achieved sufficientmilitary advantage topersuade the other to makeacceptable concessions. OnSeptember 7, 1191, Richardrepulsed Saladin’s attempt todrive the crusaders into the

sea at Arsuf, the majorengagementof thecampaign.Twice Richard marched histroops towithin twelvemilesof Jerusalem (January andJune/July 1192) only towithdraw each time, arguinghe had insufficient men totake or keep the city. Thesewere prudent decisions butjarredwiththereasonwhyhewas in southern Palestine inthe first place. With Saladin

failing to take the importantportofJaffainlateJuly1192and Richard unable todevelop a scheme to attackSaladin’s power base inEgypt, military stalematedictated a diplomaticconclusion. Negotiationsproved tortuous. Saladinrefused to contemplatesuggestions of any formalChristian authority withinJerusalem,butwasotherwise

prepared toacceptameasureof Palestinian partition. TheTreatyofJaffa(September2,1192) left the Franks incontrolofthecoastfromAcretoJaffaandallowedaccesstoJerusalem for pilgrims andfreedom of movementbetween Muslim andChristian territories. Ill andeagertoreturnhome,Richardsailed fromAcre on October9. Ironically, Saladin died

less than six months later(March4,1193).

ThisstatueofKingRichardIof

England, Richard the Lionheart,

stands outside Parliament in

London.

While failing to recaptureJerusalem, theThirdCrusadedetermined the pattern forlater eastern crusades.Thereafter, support for thereconstituted kingdom ofJerusalem,which lasted until1291, came exclusively by

sea. Cyprus provided a newand valuable partner for theFrankish settlements of themainland. Diplomacy andtruces between Muslims andChristians became standardpractice. The subjugation ofEgyptadoptedcenterstageinwestern strategic planning.Preachingandrecruitmentforcrusading becameincreasingly professional,with finance being arranged

bygovernmentsorthechurchthrough taxation. A moreprecise theology of violencerefined the privileges andobligations of the crusadersthemselves.After thefailuresof 1191–92, even the focuson Jerusalem shifted, the iterJerosolymitana (Jerusalemjourney) became subsumedinto the negotium terraesanctae (the business of theHoly Land), or simply the

sanctum negotium (the holybusiness).

TheFourthCrusade,1198-1204The thin strip of Palestiniancoast restored to Christianrule by the Third Crusadeprovedacommerciallyviablebase for a restored, ifreduced, kingdom ofJerusalem over the followingcentury, although the Holy

City itself only returned toChristian rule between 1229and 1244. After recoveringmuchof the coast during the1190s, the Franks foundprotection in a sequence oftruceswithSaladin’sheirs inEgypt and Syria. Until themid-thirteenth century,western aid came largely onits own terms rather than inresponse to a specific crisis.The inception of the Fourth

Crusade rested with PopeInnocent III (1198–1216),who envisaged all Christiansas to somedegree obliged topursue the Lord’s War. ThisInnocent promoted as part ofthe general devotional life ofthe west through preachingandtheliturgy.Anenthusiastforwarsofthecrossagainstawide range of perceivedthreats to the church,Innocent regarded the

recoveryoftheHolyLandasacentralandurgentobjective.Oneof thefirst thingshedidwastoproclaimaneweasternexpeditioninAugust1198.

The tombofPope Innocent III

is in the Basilica of St. John

Lateran, in Rome. This pope’s

declarationthatgoingonCrusade

was every Christian’s obligation

was an important force in

launchingtheFourthCrusade.

By 1201, Innocent’s callhad been answered by agroup of powerful northernFrench barons, includingCount Baldwin of Flanders,

whochoseas their leader thewell-connected northernItalian marquess Boniface ofMontferrat,whosefamilyhada long history of closeinvolvement in the easternMediterranean. Egypt waschosen as the target of theexpedition. The absence ofkings denied the crusadersaccess to national taxes orfleets, forcing them to seektransport from Venice.

Unfortunately, the agreementwith Venice stipulated anoptimistically large numberof crusaders and acommensurately inflatedprice to be paid. It becameapparent in the summer of1202 that the crusaders, bynow gathered at Venice,could not raise the agreedsum. As well as supplyingfifty warships of their own,theVenetians had committed

much of their shipping andhenceannualincometocarrythe crusade. Realistically,they could neither abandonthe enterprise nor cancel thedebt.Asasolution,thedoge,Enrico Dandolo (d.1205),offered a moratorium on thedebt in return for thecrusaders’ help in capturingthe port ofZara inDalmatia,even though this was aChristian city belonging to a

fellowcrusader,KingEmericof Hungary. Despite evidentqualms and papaldisapproval, the crusadershad little option if theywished to pursue theirultimate objective. Zara fellto the Veneto-crusader forceonNovember24,1202.By then, elements in the

crusade and Venetianleadershipwereconsideringafurther diversion to

Constantinople in support ofAlexius Angelus, son of thedeposed Byzantine emperorIsaac II (1185–95). YoungAlexiuspromisedtosubsidizethe crusaders’ attack onEgyptiftheyhelpedhimtaketheByzantinethronefromhisusurping uncle Alexius III(1195–1203).Manycrusaderswere disgusted by the planand withdrew, but theleadershipandthebulkofthe

army sailed with youngAlexius and theVenetians toConstantinople, arriving inJune 1203.Amonth later anamphibious assault on thecity persuadedAlexius III toflee, allowing for therestorationofIsaacIIwithhisson, now Alexius IV, as co-emperor. Their dependenceon loutish westernersalienated Greek opinion,while their inability to honor

Alexius’ promise of subsidyand assistance underminedsupportfromthecrusaders.InJanuary 1204 they weredeposed, murdered, andreplacedbyAlexiusVDucasMurzuphlus, who beganhostilemaneuversagainst thecrusaders.Facedwithacrisisof survival, the westernleaders decided to imposetheir will on the Greeks, inMarch 1204 agreeing to

conquer and partition theByzantine Empire. On April12–13, the crusadersbreachedthewallsofthecity.Alexius V fled and thevictorious westerners wereallowed three days ofpillaging. Although probablyexaggerated, this atrocity hasrung down the centuries ininfamy.WithinweeksaLatinemperor, Baldwin ofFlanders,hadbeenappointed

and the territorial annexationof the Greek Empire begun.A year later, hopes ofcontinuing the crusade toEgypt were abandoned. TheLatin empire ofConstantinople lasted until1261; western occupation ofpartsofGreece forcenturies.The precarious state of partsof the Frankish conquests inGreece prompted crusades tobe proclaimed against the

Greeks from 1231 until wellintothefourteenthcentury.The capture of

Constantinople was not anaccident; it had beenconsidered by every majorexpedition since 1147.Successive popes had voiceddisappointment at Greekfailure to contribute to therecoveryoftheHolyLand.Inthe circumstances of 1202–03,conquestappearedviable;

in the spring of 1204necessary. However, it wasnever the ultimate object ofthe crusade, and for Venicemarked a new departure intoterritorial instead of simplycommercial imperialism. Thediversion was a result ofpolicy not conspiracy, itsmotives a mixture ofpragmatism, idealism, andopportunism thatcharacterizedallotherwarsof

thecross.

TheFifthCrusade,1213-29More than its predecessors,the Fifth Crusade reflectedthe institutionalization ofcrusadinginChristiansocietyas envisagedby Innocent III.In the context of a widerprocess of semi-permanentevangelization, crusadingactedasonemanifestationofChristian revivalism. The

papalbullQuiaMaior(1213)launching the new easternenterprise extended access tothecrusaderemissionofsins,the indulgence, to thosewhosent a proxy or provided aproportionate sum of moneyinredemptionoftheirvow.In1215 the Fourth LateranCouncil of the westernChurch authorized universalclerical taxation to supportthe cause. A massive and

carefully orchestratedcampaign of recruitment,propaganda, and financeproduced a series ofexpeditions to the eastbetween1217 and1229.Thebulk of recruits came fromGermany, central Europe,Italy, and the British Islesinstead of France, thetraditional heartland ofcrusade enlistment. Afterearly contingents landed at

Acre in 1217-18, includingone led by King Andrew ofHungary(1205–35),thefocusof military operations turnedto Egypt when, in 1218, thecrusaders attacked Damietta,a port in the eastern NileDelta.Thecityfellonlyafteradifficultandcostlysiege inNovember 1219. Egyptianproposals to exchangeDamietta for Jerusalem wererejected as improper and

unworkablebyagroupledbytheCardinalLegate,Pelagius,whose control of the pursestringsgavehimconsiderableauthority within the crusadearmy. Lack of leadershipproved more damaging. Thewesterners refused to acceptorders from the king ofJerusalem, John of Brienne(1210–25). However, thecommander chosen by thepope, Frederick II of

Germany (1211–50),remained in Europe. In thesummer of 1221, to preventthe crusade disintegratingthrough inactivity, theChristian army moved southtoward Cairo, only to be cutoff by floods, harried by theEgyptians, and forced tosurrender on August 30.Damietta was evacuated onSeptember8,1221.Recruiting continued

almost unabated despite thesetback in Egypt. In 1227,FrederickII finallyembarkedfortheeast,onlytoturnbackimmediately because ofsudden and serious illness.Although Pope Gregory IX(1227–41), a veteran crusaderecruitingagent,lostpatienceand excommunicated him,Frederick, undaunted, sailedto the Holy Land in 1228.Exploiting the rivalries

between the rulers of Egyptand Syria, in February 1229Frederick agreed to a treatywith the sultan of Egypt thatrestored Jerusalem to theFranks. The city was to beopentoallandtheHaramal-Sharif, theTempleMount, toremain under the Islamicreligious authorities (notdissimilartothearrangementsin Jerusalem after 1967).However, unpopular for his

high-handedness, whenFrederick embarked for thewest from Acre on May 1,1229, he was pelted withoffal. With a briefinterruption in 1240,Jerusalem remained inChristianhandsuntilcapturedby Khwarazmian raiders,Turkishfreebootersinthepayof the sultan of Egypt, in1244. The city remainedunder Muslim control until

1917.

TheThirteenthCenturyAfter 1229, eastern crusadesprogressed from thepragmatictotheoptimistictothe desperate. Truces withfeuding Muslim neighborscontinued to sustainFrankishOutremer until the accessionto power in Egypt of themilitant Mamluk sultans,members of a professional

caste of Turkish slavewarriors, who replaced theheirsofSaladininthe1250s.TheFranks’alliancewiththeMongols who invaded Syriainthelate1250s,followedbythe Mongols’ defeat by theMamluks and withdrawalfrom the region in 1260, leftthem vulnerable to the newEgyptian sultan, Baibars(1260–77), who wascommitted to eradicating the

Christian settlements.Successive westernexpeditions under a series ofgreat nobles (the Count ofChampagnein1239;theEarlofCornwallin1240;theLordEdward, later Edward I ofEngland, in 1271) achievedlittle other than temporaryadvantage or respite. Rulers,such as the kings of Franceand Aragon, dispatchedoccasional relief flotillas or

stationedmodest garrisons inAcre. Despite the continuedpopularityofcrusadingasanideal and activity, between1229andthefinallossofthelast Christian outposts inSyria and Palestine in 1291,only one internationalcampaign of substancereached the easternMediterranean,thecrusadeofLouisIXofFrance,1248-54.

Pope Gregory IX (1227–41),

who reigned during the final

years of the Fifth Crusade,

excommunicated Frederick II of

Germany for initially failing to

reachtheHolyLand.

Louis IX’s crusade provedthe best prepared, mostlavishly funded, andmeticulouslyplannedofall.Itwas also one of the mostdisastrous, its failure

matching its ambition. Louisintended to conquer Egyptand change the balance ofpower in the Near East.TakingthecrossinDecember1244, over the next threeyears he assembled an armyof about fifteen thousand, atreasury of over 1 millionlivres,andastockpileoffoodand equipment stored inCyprus, where Louis arrivedin the late summer of 1248.

The following spring,supported by the OutremerFranks,Louis invadedEgypt,capturingDamiettathedayhelanded (June 5, 1249). Theassault on the interior beganonNovember20,only togetbogged down in the NileDelta for more than twomonths. After a hard-foughtbut indecisive engagementoutside Mansourah onFebruary 7, 1250, Louis’s

army could make no furtherprogress and became cut offfrom its base at Damietta.Withdrawal in early Aprilturned into a rout as theChristian army disintegratedthrough disease, fatigue, anda superior enemy. Louishimself, sufferingbadlyfromdysentery, was among thosecaptured, being released inreturn for Damietta and amassive ransom. Stunned by

what he saw as God’schastisement,Louisremainedin the Holy Land until 1254bolstering defenses (those atCaesarea can still be seen)and shoring up Outremer’sdiplomatic relations with itsneighbors.Yetwhilesecuringhis reputation for piety,Louis’s stay did nothing toreverse the verdict of 1250.The best-laid crusade planhadfaileddismally.

Following thedefeatof theMongols in 1260, Baibars ofEgypt and his successorsQalawun (1279–90) and al-Ashraf Khalil (1290–93)systematically dismemberedthe remaining Frankishholdings in Syria andPalestine. Antioch fell in1268; Tripoli in 1289; and,finally, after an heroic butfutile defense, Acre in 1291,after which the remaining

Christian outposts wereevacuated without furtherresistance. To ensure theFranks would not againreturn, thesultansleveledtheportstheycaptured.Thewestwatched this collapse withalarm, concern, andimpotence. Political rivalries,competing domesticdemands,andamorerealisticassessment of the requiredscale of operation conspired

in the failure to organizeadequate military response.Louis IX’s new projectedeastern expedition of 1270reachednofurtherthanTunison its way to Egypt. ThereLouis died on August 25,1270, and most of hisfollowers went home. Yetafter thefinal lossofAcre in1291, plans continued to behatched and raids conductedin the Levant throughout the

fourteenth century until thenew threat of the OttomanTurks in theBalkans and theAegean supervened from the1350s and again in the mid-fifteenth century, redirectingthefocusofholywar.

This c.1899 engraving depicts

Louis IX of France, who led a

crusade (1248–54) that was well

funded and well planned, but

endedindisaster.

The Children’s

Crusadeof1212was

launched by zealotry

directedatfreeingthe

Holy Sepulchre from

non-Catholics.

THREE

CrusadesintheWest

PopularUprisingsTHE IDEOLOGY AND RHETORIC

OF theHoly Landwarswereapplied easily to internalreligious and political

conflicts within Christendomandtofrontierwarswithnon-Christians. Socially, its gripwas exposed in the popularoutbreaks of revivalistenthusiasm for the recoveryof the Holy Land witnessedby the so-called Children’sCrusade and the Shepherds’Crusades. The Children’sCrusade in the summer of1212 comprised two distinctoutburstsofpopular religious

enthusiasm prompted by anatmosphereofcrisisprovokedby the preaching of thethreats to Christendomsimultaneously posed by theMuslims in the Holy Land,the Moors in Spain, andhereticsinsouthernFrance.Aseries of penitential andrevivalist processions innorthern France, led byStephen of Cloyes from theVermandois, marched to St.

Denis near Paris voicingvague appeals for moralreform. There is no clearevidence these marchersintended to liberateJerusalem. Further east, atmuch the same time, largegroups of young men andadolescents (called in thesources pueri, meaningchildren but also anyoneunderfullmaturity)aswellaspriests and adults, apparently

led by a boy calledNicholasofCologne,marched throughthe Rhineland proclaimingtheir desire to free the HolySepulchre. It seems some ofthese marchers reachednorthern Italy seekingtransport east but probablygettingnofurther.Theirholywarwasof the spirit.Takingthe church’s teachingliterally, they apparentlybelievedtheirpoverty,purity,

and innocence would prevailwhere knights could not.Experience soon taught themotherwise.Themarchesof1212found

parallels in the Shepherds’Crusade of 1251, a populistrising in France that blamedLouis IX’s Egyptian debacleonacorruptnobility.Onceitsleaders were exposed not asholy men but disorderlyrabble-rousers,themovement

was violently suppressed.However, there were similarexpressions of social andpolitical anxieties throughsupport for the transcendentcause of the Holy Land inItaly in 1309 and France in1320.Allwerecloselylinkedtonewsorrumorsofexternalthreats to Christendom, thedissemination of a clearlydefined redemptive theologyincorporatingthecrusadeasa

collectivepenitential act, andthe perceived failure of theleadersofsocietytoliveuptotheir obligations on eithercount.

CrusadesAgainstHereticsandChristiansOfficial Church teachingincreasingly encouraged thewide application of wars ofthecross,evenifInnocentIII,in his bull Quia Maior

(1213),wasatpains to stressthepriorityoftheHolyLand.From the 1130s Jerusalemindulgences on the model of1096 were being offered tothose fighting politicalenemies of the pope such asRoger II of Sicily (1101–54)or Markward of Anweiler inSicily in 1199, assortedheretics, their protectors andmercenary bands. Theseindulgences were seemingly

grantedwithout the attendantvows, preaching, or cross-taking.The first time the fullapparatus of the wars of thecross was directed againstChristianscamewith thewardeclared by Innocent III in1208 against the Catharheretics of Languedoc,known later as theAlbigensians, and theirChristian protectors. One ofthe most notorious of all

medieval wars, theAlbigensianCrusades (1209–29) degenerated from agenuine attempt to cauterizewidespread heresy, whichmany saw as a dangerouslyinfectiouswoundbleedingallChristendom, into a brutalland seizure. The puritanicaldualist Cathar heresy hadgrown in strength in parts ofLanguedoc controlled by thecount of Toulouse. The

assassination of the PapalLegatefortheregionin1208ledInnocentIIItoofferHolyLand indulgences and thecross to northern Frenchbarons. Under a militantmonkish zealot, Arnald-Amaury, abbot of Cîteaux,and an ambitious adventurer,Simon de Montfort, thecrusaders began to annex thecounty of Toulouse and itssurrounding provinces, often

withgreatsavagerymetedoutindiscriminately to localChristiansaswellasheretics.The sack of Béziers in 1209was remembered asespecially brutal. In 1213,SimondefeatedandkilledthecountofToulouse’sallyKingPeter of Aragon at the battleof Muret. After Simon’sdeathin1218,theimpetusofthe crusade faltered untilrevivedbyKingLouisVIIIof

France(1223–26)in1226.Bythe end of the yearLanguedoc had effectivelybeen conquered, itssubjugation confirmed in theTreatyofParis(1229).

ChristcrownsRogerIIofSicily

(1101–54) in this mosaic in the

churchLaMartorana,inPalermo.

The papacy broadened the scope

of the Crusades by granting

indulgences to those who fought

the pope’s enemies—who

includedRoger.

Ironically, for all itsultimatepoliticalsuccess, theAlbigensianCrusadefailedtoeradicate the Cathars, a task

effected by the more pacificand reasonedmethods of theInquisition. However,crusades against hereticsremained in the Church’sarsenal for the rest of theMiddleAgesandbeyond.Sixcrusades were launched orplanned against the CzechHussite evangelicals ofBohemia between 1420 and1471. ProtestantReformations in thesixteenth

century stimulated a revivalof crusade schemes againstenemies of the CatholicChurch, such as Henry VIIIand Elizabeth I of England,and remained a traditionalresort for devout andthreatened Catholics in thenew Wars of Religion, forexample against theHuguenots in France in the1560s.

The Albigensian Crusades

(1209–29) targeted the Cathars,

some of whom took refuge at

Montsegur, a castle whose ruins

stillstandintheFrenchPyrenees.

The crusaders combined

persecution of the heresy with

landseizure.

To assert and sustain thethirteenth-century papacy’splenitude of power, drive fordoctrinal and liturgicaluniformity,andacquisitionof

a temporal state in Italy,popes found the crusade amalleable instrument. Thoseattacked by crucesignati as“schismatics” includedpeasants in the Netherlandsand theLowerWeser (1228–34); Bosnians opposed toHungarian rule (from 1227);and rebels against the pope’svassal Henry III of England(1216-17 and 1265). Themain crusades against

Christians were fought overpapal security in its lands inItaly. From the 1190s, popeswere fearful of beingsurrounded by theHohenstaufen dynasty, kingsof Germany who were alsorulers of southern Italy andSicily.ThiscausedtheThirtyYears’ War with theHohenstaufen Frederick IIand his heirs (1239–68) thatendedwith a papal nominee,

Charles ofAnjou, as ruler ofSicily andNaples. Followinga Sicilian rebellion againstCharles in1282,muchof thefightingduringtheWaroftheSicilianVespers(1282–1302)alsoattractedtheapparatusofcrusading: cross, preaching,indulgences, church taxation,and so on. This habitcontinued for the regularlocal or regional campaignsinpursuitofpapalinterestsin

central and northern Italyduringthepopes’residenceatAvignon (1309–77). TheseItalian crusades scarcelypretended to conceal papalcorporateorpersonalinterest,to the disgust of critics suchas Dante. The failure ofcrusades launched by bothcontending parties to end theGreat Papal Schism (1378–1417)ledtotheabandonmentofthisformofholywar,only

occasionallytoberevivedbybellicosepopessuchasJuliusII(1503–13).

SpainThe ceremonies andprivileges associated withexpeditions to Jerusalem hadbeenextended tocover thosefightingtheMuslimsinSpainsince the 1090s, a processregularized by the FirstLateran Council in 1123.

Further authorization forcrusades against the Moorscame in 1147-48, during theSecond Crusade, and atintervals thereafter.Achurchcouncil in Segovia in 1166even offered Jerusalemindulgences to those whodefended Castile fromChristian attack. The latertwelfth-century invasions ofIberia by the Muslimfundamentalist Almohads

fromNorthAfrica threatenedChristian conquests andprovokedagreater frequencyin crusading appeals,culminating in thecrusadeof1212 against them. This ledto the great Christian victoryof Las Navas de Tolosa(1212) over the Almohads.Thereafter the campaigns ofthe Spanish Reconquistabecame more obviouslynational concerns, although

still liable to elicit crusadestatus, as with the conquestsoftheBalearicIslands(1229–31) and Valencia (1232–35)byJamesIofAragon(1213–76).WiththefallofCordoba(1236) and Seville (1248) toFerdinand III of Castile(1217–52), formal or activecrusading against the Moors,nowpennedintheemirateofGranada(until1492),becameeffectively redundant.

Ironically, the peninsula’smost intimate subsequentexperience of crusading wasas victim when the Frenchinvaded Aragon in 1285 aspart of the crusade called atthe start of the War ofSicilian Vespers (1282–1302).

TheBalticThe Baltic crusades acted asoneelementinacruelprocess

of Christianization andGermanization, providing areligious gloss to ethniccleansing and territorialaggrandizement more blatantand, in places, moresuccessful than anywhereelse.Crusading in theBaltic,first applied to Danish andGerman anti-Slav aggressionbetweentheElbeandOderin1147 during the SecondCrusade, cloaked a

missionary war which, giventhe Christian prohibition onforced conversion,representedacontradictionincanon law. These warsdirectly served local politicaland ecclesiastical ambitions.The main areas of conquestafter 1200 included Prussia,Livonia, Estonia, andFinland. In Prussia, theexpansion of land-grabbingGermanprincesinPomerania

gave way to the competinginterests ofDenmark and theMilitary Order of TeutonicKnights. This order hadoriginally been founded byGermansinAcreinthewakeof the Third Crusade in the1190s, but because of itsregional associations soonbecame heavily, andultimatelyalmostexclusively,involved in fighting for thecross in the north. The

fighting in Livonia devolvedonto the church under thearchbishop of Riga and theMilitary Order of SwordBrothers (founded in 1202).In Estonia the Danes againclashed with the MilitaryOrders, as well as withSwedes and Russians fromNovgorod. Finland becamethe target of Swedishexpansion. By the 1230s,controlofwarandsettlement

in Prussia, Livonia, andsouthern Estonia had beentaken up by the TeutonicKnights, with whom theSword Brothers wereamalgamated in 1237. In1226 their Master, Hermannvon Salza, was createdimperial prince of Prussia,which was declared a papalfief held by the TeutonicKnights in 1234. Althoughsome specific grants for

crusades in the Balticcontinued, most of thesenorthern wars adopted thecharacter of “eternalcrusades” once Innocent IVin1245confirmedtherightoftheTeutonicKnightstograntcrusade indulgences withoutspecial papal authorization.This gave the TeutonicKnights a unique status, notheldevenbytherulersofthekingdom of Jerusalem, of a

sovereign governmentpossessed of the automaticright of equating its foreignpolicy with the crusade.Cashing in on this in thefourteenth century, theKnights developed a sort ofchivalric package tour forwestern nobles eager to seesome fighting, enjoy lavishfeasting, earn indulgences,andgildtheirreputations.TheKnights’ appeal slackened

withtheirfailuretoovercomeLithuania-Poland and theconversion of paganLithuania in 1386. Theirtransformation into a secularGerman principality wascompleted in 1525 when theMaster of the TeutonicKnights in Prussia embracedLutheranism andsecularization. The Livonianbranchfollowedsuitin1562.

TheSpanishReconquista

TheBaltic

JewsFrontiers, medieval ormodern, can be religious,ethnic, cultural, and social aswell as geographic. In suchcases,warsofthecrossaddeda particular edge of hostilityor intensity. While nocrusades were specificallydirected against the Jewishcommunities anywhere in

Europe orAsia, the ideologyof crusading encouragedviolenceagainstthem,despiteofficial secular andecclesiastical disapproval.The ringing condemnation ofenemies of the cross and theconcentration on theCrucifixion story in thepreaching of Urban II in1095-96, or Bernard ofClairvaux’s in 1146-47,needed little

misunderstanding to beapplied to the Jews. Thepogroms in the Rhineland in1096 and 1146-47 and inEnglandin1190werenotthesum of anti-Jewish violence,which spread widely innorthern Europe. But theJews were only evercollateral targets ofcrusading. Local rulersreserved exploitation andexpropriation to themselves;

Richard I condemned theattacksonJewsinLondonin1189 because he regardedtheir property as his. AculturalmyopiaonthepartofChristiansrefusedtoseeJewsas fully human, a dismissiveattitude prominentlydisplayed by the greatcrusaderLouis IX of France.Such discrimination couldtranslate into persecution,althoughincreasinglyitledto

expulsionfromregionsoftheBritishIslesandFranceinthelaterthirteenthandfourteenthcenturies.Lackingcivilrightsor in most cases effectivesystems of autonomous ruleor defense, Jews inmedievalEurope suffered throughChristian schizophrenia.Protected by ChristianBiblical prescript, Jews werepolitically not sufficientlyvisible to constitute the sort

of material threat that wouldelicit a crusade against them.Yet at the same timeChristian teaching also sawthemasmalignand thereforea religious challenge toChristianity. Increasingly,blood libels, accusations ofJews murdering Christians,rather than crusades,provoked massacres. Wheredaily experience and longtradition denied both Jewish

malignity and culturalinvisibility, as, ironically, intwo regionsmost infectedbyactive crusading, Spain andOutremer, Jews were lessmolested, even tolerated.Crusading played a part, attimes a gory one, inconstructing a closed,intolerant society. However,toblametheexcessesofanti-Semitism, medieval ormodern, on the wars of the

cross is facile andunconvincing. That well ofhatred fed from manystreams.

Amanuscriptilluminationfrom

a French Bible, c. 1250, shows

twoJews,kneelingatright,about

to be put to death as retribution

for the death of Jesus, shown at

the top left. Though European

anti-Semitism cannot be blamed

only on the Crusades, the tenth

through fourteenth centuries saw

Jews become the victims of

persecution.

TheEndofCrusadingThe traditional terminal date

for the Crusades, the loss ofAcre in 1291, makes nosense. People continued totake the cross, if indiminishing numbers. Theattendant institutions ofindulgences, legalobligations, and taxationpersistedinusebyrulersandpopes for centuries. At leastuntil the outbreak of theHundred Years’ War in the1330s, the recovery of the

Holy Land seemed viable, ifdifficultandexpensive.IntheMediterranean, attacks onpiratical Turkish emirs andthe Mamluks continuedsporadically,suchasthesackof Alexandria in 1365 byPeter I of Cyprus. Thegrowing power of theOttomanTurksfromthemid-fourteenth century redefinedthe objective of crusading,throwing Christendom once

more on the defensive. AtNicopolis on the Danube(1396) and Varna on theBlack Sea (1444) westerncrusadearmiessenttocombatthe Ottomans in the Balkanswere crushed, on bothoccasions with the Turksreceiving aid from Christianallies, respectively Serbs andGenoese. Rhodes, occupiedby the Military Order of St.John, the Hospitallers, since

1309, held out until 1522before relocating to Malta,fromwheretheywereevictedbyNapoleonin1798.Cyprusremained in Christian handsuntil 1571, Crete until 1669;bothfruitsofearliercrusades.Crusading mentalities werere-forged in the Adriatic andcentral Europe in the face ofthe Ottoman advance in thefifteenth century. After theTurkish capture of

Constantinople in 1453,crusading again seemed avital necessity to theRenaissance papacy. Inresponse to the fall of theGreek imperial capital a newcrusade was proclaimed.Belgrade was saved in 1456by an unlikely crusadingforce gathered by John ofCapistrano. As long as theOttomanspresentedadanger,crusading ideas retained

relevance and interest, eveninto the seventeenth century,when Francis Bacondismissed them as “therendezvous of cracked brainsthatworetheirfeatherintheirheadinsteadoftheirhat.”Yettheappeallingered.Menmayhave taken the cross andexpected indulgences in theanti-Turkish Holy League(1684–97). The end ofcrusading came not in the

dramaofafailedcampaignora siege lost, but as a long,dying fall, finally obliteratedas kingdoms and secularpowers, not churches orreligion,claimedthemoralityaswellascontrolofwarfare.

Polish artist Jan Matejko

painted a scene of hand-to-hand

combatduring the1444Ottoman

victory over Polish and

Hungarian forces near the Black

SeafortressofVarna,inBulgaria.

The fourteenth-

century Sultan

Hassan Mosque, in

Cairo, was built

during the Mamluk

Period.TheMamluks

were among the

forces that brought

unity and strength to

what was once the

Outremer, and ended

theCrusades.

FOUR

TheImpactoftheCrusades

TRADITIONALLY,THECRUSADES

outside Christendom havebeen credited with profoundinfluenceoverthedistribution

of political and religiouspower in the regions theyaffected. Yet their impact aswell as success wasdetermined by forces usuallybeyond the crusaders’control. Without thedisintegration of the unity oftheMuslim Near East in thelate eleventh century and ofMuslim Spain twogenerations earlier, wars ofthecrossagainstIslamwould

probably not have begun orwould have rapidly stalled.Conversely, without thewesterners’ political andeconomic capacity to sustainconquest andcolonization, inthe Mediterranean and theBaltic,thesewarswouldhaveproved evanescent. Thethirteenth-century failure oftheMuslim powers of NorthAfrica and southern Iberiaand of the disparate tribes of

the southern and easternBaltic to maintain anyconcerted resistance toChristian expansion allowedcrusadestoprevail.Inmarkedcontrast stood the rise ofLithuania in the fourteenthcentury that successfullyresisted further crusadingadvances in the Baltic, aunification comparablestrategically to that of Syria,Palestine, and Egypt under

the Ayyubids (c.1174-1250)and the Mamluks (1250–1517)whichsealedthefateofOutremer.The consequences of

crusading activity variedhugely. In Spain, theChristian reconquestdecisively reoriented thepoliticalandculturaldirectionof the region. In the Baltic,the conquest andChristianization of Prussia,

Livonia, and Finlandredefined the area and itspeoples within LatinChristendom. In Greece andits islands, large areas ofwhich were occupied bywesternnoblesandVenetiansafter the Fourth Crusade, insome cases for centuries, theeffect of western conquesttended to be superficial, butwhile it lasted,as in thecaseofVenetianCrete (held until

1669), often unpleasant ordownright brutal for theindigenous population. Bycontrast, in the Near East,with theexceptionofCypruswhich fell to Richard I ofEngland in 1191 andremained in the hands ofLatin Christians until 1571,thewesternpresencethathadbegun when the firstcrusaders burst into Anatoliaand northern Syria in the

summer and autumn of 1097leftfewtracesexceptphysicaland, possibly, cultural scars.Although western-sponsoredcoastal raids continued intothefifteenthcentury,aftertheexpulsion of the last LatinChristian outposts on theLevantine shore in 1291, thesystematic destruction of theportsby the sultansofEgyptprevented any prospect ofreturn,apartfromatrickleof

determined, well-heeledpilgrims and a few friars asresident tourist guides.Nothing remainsof theLatinpresence in Syria andPalestineexceptstones,somestill standing as built butmostly ruins, and a revivedmemoryofbitterness.

TheAegeanintheThirteenthand

FourteenthCenturies

It is possible to argue thatsuppression of heresy withinChristendom in the thirteenthcentury and papal campaignsagainst their politicalopponentsfromthethirteenthto the fifteenth centuries didnotrequireaspecialideologyof holy war. Similarly, thefrontier expansion in the

Balticandtheintegrationintothe polity of western Europeof powers such as Denmarkand Sweden preceded theirassociation with crusadingideology and practices. InSpain, the Christianreconquest, or Reconquista,predated its reinvention as aholy war. The wars wouldhaveoccurredinanycase.Bycontrast, the wars in theeasternMediterraneancanbe

seenonlyastheconsequenceofthisnewformofholywar.Geographically, Syria andPalestine did not lie onwestern Christendom’sfrontiers. Only throughimaginative empathy did thepolitics of the Near Eastdirectly impinge on LatinChristendom, a consequenceof the ubiquity in the west’sreligious culture of endlessrepetitionoftheBiblestories,

in preaching, liturgy, and theplastic arts. Perhaps thestrangest aspect of crusadingto the Holy Land layprecisely in its lack ofconnectionwith thedomesticcircumstances of theterritories whither the armiesweredirected.WhiletheFirstCrusade answered theinterestsof theeasternGreekChristian empire ofByzantium, it was hardly

portrayed as such anddevelopedamomentumquiteremoved fromGreek frontierpolicy. There existed nostrategic or material interestfor theknightsof thewest tocampaign in Judaea. This iswhere comparisons withmodern imperialismcollapse.For the land-hungry orpolitically ambitiousadventurer, other regionsnearer home offered easier,

richer pickings. With thepartialexceptionoftheThirdCrusade (1188–92), currentsof western enthusiasm andpolicy, as in the Fourth andFifth Crusades, determinedthetimingandrecruitmentofeastern crusades rather thanthe immediate needs of thewestern settlements in theLevant. More generally,whilethepresenceofwesternwarriors and settlers on the

immediate frontiers ofMuslim Iberia or the paganBaltic made some economicorpoliticalsense,thiswasnottruefortheHolyLand,wherethe motive for occupationdepended on its status as arelic of Christ on earth, afundamentally religiousmissionhowevermaterial themethodsemployedtoachieveit. Consequently, theChristian wars of the twelfth

andthirteenthcenturiesintheNear East provide startlingtestimony to the power ofideas.

TheCrusadesandMuslimPowerHow significant, therefore,weretheseeasterncrusadesinthe development ofinternational patterns ofpower? They certainly thrustwesterners into geopolitical

eventsotherwisefar removedfromtheirorbitofinterest.Aparticularreligiousperceptionof world history led towestern Europeaninvolvementinfashioningthepolitical destiny of Syria,Palestine,Egypt,andIraqinaperiod of decisive re-alignment of Near Easternpower.UrbanIIpossessedanacute

interest in Christian political

history, which often madegloomy reading. Thesuccesses of the acceptanceofChristianityby theRomanEmpire in the fourth centuryand the subsequentconversion of the Germanicsuccessorpowersintheruinsof the western empire fromthe fifth to seventh centurieshad been offset by theirruption of Islam in theseventh and early eighth

centuries. The rapid Arabconquests of the ChristianprovincesofEgypt,Palestineand Syria, North Africa, andmostof theIberianpeninsulabetween 634 and 711 hadreducedChristendom, as onelatemedieval pope had it, toan “angle of the world.”Jerusalem had fallen toArabrule in 638; almost all theBiblicalscenesfamiliartothefaithful lay under Muslim

control. Further advances inthe ninth century, includingthe capture of Sicily andbases in southern Italy,seemedtothreatenRomeandconvert the westernMediterranean into aMuslimlake. The twomost powerfulregimes in the west, theCarolingian Empire of theeighthcenturyortheGermanemperors of the tenth andeleventh, despite laying

claims toanItaliankingdom,rarely engaged directly withthelossofsouthernChristianprovinces. For the empire ofByzantium, with its longfrontiers with Islamic states,the confrontation occupied ahabitual rather than urgentelement of foreign policy,especially after thestabilization of borders ineastern Anatolia from theeighthcentury.

TheMezquitaofCordoba,now

aRomanCatholic church, was

the second-largestmosque in the

world when Islamic rule

governed much of the Iberian

peninsula. In the eyes of Pope

Urban II, Moorish rule of the

region was a grave setback to

Christianity.

The hundred years before1095sawatransformation.Inthe western Mediterranean,

Muslim pirates were ejectedfrombasesinsouthernFranceat the end of the tenthcentury. Between 1061 and1091, Italian-Norman forcesconquered Sicily. Furtherwest, the collapse of thecaliphateofCordobainSpainin 1031 and its replacementbyapatchworkofcompetingprincipalities,ruledbytheso-calledtaifa(or“party”)kings,presentedChristianrulersand

mercenaries from outside thepeninsula with opportunitiesto extract tribute and extendterritory. Driven by politicsand profit, not religion,Christian rule advancedpiecemeal, Muslim—Christian alliances being ascommon as conflict. Thefamed conqueror ofValenciain 1094, the CastilianRoderigo Diaz (d.1099), “ElCid,” spent as much of his

career fighting for Muslimlords against Christians asvice versa. However, whenthe usually squabblingChristian princes united,significant gains wereachieved,notably the captureof Toledo by Alfonso VI ofCastilein1085.Dynasticandecclesiastical links drewrecruits from Catalonia andnorth of the Pyrenees,although only with hindsight

could they be equated withcrusaders.

The Castilian military leader,

RoderigoDiaz (ElCid,d.1099),

who fought forbothMuslimand

Christianlords,ishonoredbythis

statue in Balboa Park in San

Diego,California.

In the easternMediterranean in the secondhalf of the tenth century,Byzantine armies had re-established a foothold innorthern Syria, capturing

Antioch in 969, whichremained in Greek handsuntil1084,onlyadecadeandahalfbeforethearrivaloftheFirstCrusade.Otherwise, theAnatolian/Syrian frontiershad remained largely static.The tripartite balance ofpower in the region wasbased on the ByzantineEmpiretothenorthandwest;the orthodox Sunni MuslimAbbasid Caliphate of

Baghdad in nominal controlof Iran, Iraq, andSyria;withtheShiaMuslimCaliphateofthe Fatimids in Egypt since969. In the eleventh centurythe political configuration ofthe Near East was severelyjolted by the eruption of theSeljuk Turks from northeastIran. Establishing themselvesin control of the BaghdadCaliphate in 1055 as sultans(sultan is Arabic for power),

the Seljuks pushed furtherwest, by 1079 establishingtheir overlordship inmost ofSyriaandPalestine,havingin1071 defeated a Byzantinearmy at Manzikert innortheasternAnatolia.Withintwenty years, a SeljukSultanate had beenconsolidated inAnatoliawitha capital at Nicaea close toConstantinople. However,despite the Seljuk conquests,

Muslim unitywas a charade,especially after the outbreakofcivilwarbetweentheheirsof Sultan Malik Shah. TheSeljuk empire in Iraq andSyria comprised a looseconfederation of city states,often controlled by Turkishmilitary commanders(atabegs) and slavemercenaries (Mamluks) whoowed allegiance to one orother rival Seljuk prince.

Throughout the region ethnicdiversity and alienation ofruler fromruledprevailed. Inparts of Syria, immigrantTurkish Sunnis ruled anindigenousShiapopulationorforced their protection onlocalArab dynasts. The ShiaFatimid Caliphate of Egypt,with power in the hands ofoften non-Arab, Turkish orArmenian viziers, ruled alargely Sunni population.

Such complexity ensured acontinuing political volatilitythatofferedrichopportunitiestotheambitious,theruthless,the skilful, and the fortunate.The appearance of thewestern armies of the FirstCrusade in 1097–98 merelyadded one more foreignmilitary presence to an areaalready crowded withcompetingrulersfromoutsidetheregion.

In contrastwith the impactof wars of the cross in andaround western Europe, theconquests in Syria andPalestine played only amodest role in defining thepoliticaldirectionoftheNearEast in the twelfth andthirteenth centuries and nonethereafter. Developmentsbeyond the Muslim frontiersand Christian control largelydetermined the settlers’ fate.

Thetwelfthcenturywitnessedthe establishment first ofSyrian unity under Zengi ofAleppo (d.1146) and his sonNural-Din(d.1174)and thenof the unification of Syriawith Egypt under Nur al-Din’s Kurdish mercenarycommander turnedindependent Egyptian sultan,Saladin (d.1193).Apart froma serious attempt to contestcontrol of Egypt between

1163 and1169, theChristianrulers in Palestine, theFranks, observed the processas largely impotentbystanders.Onlyafterhehadsecured the three inlandMuslim capitals ofDamascus, Aleppo, andMosul did Saladin turn hisarmies on the Franks in thecrushing campaign of 1187-88thatgaverise to theThirdCrusade.

Although Saladin, Zengi,and Nur al-Din all locatedtheirpolicies in thevanguardofaMuslimreligiousrevivalthat swept westwards fromIran and Iraq, decking theirwars with the language ofjihad, most of their energiesand violence was directedboth materially andideologically against otherMuslims.Saladin’scaptureofJerusalem in 1187 was

matched by his suppressionof the heretical FatimidCaliphate in 1171. ForSaladin and his successors,their main concerns focusedon the internal maintenanceof their empire, reflected inSaladin’spragmaticapproachtonegotiatingthepartitionofPalestine with the Franksduring the Third Crusade.The repeated civil warsamong Saladin’s successors,

the Ayyubids, encouragedthemtoenterintotruceswiththe Franks, who stillcontrolledmuch of the Syro-Palestiniancoastbetween the1190s and 1260s. Beyondtemporary panics followingtheir capture of Damietta(1219and1249),theAyyubidmilitary system successfullyresisted the two Christianattacks on Egypt (1218-21and 1249-50), although in

1250 the role in defendingEgypt played by corps ofMamluk mercenariesprecipitated their assumptionoftheEgyptiansultanate.Theadvent of the Mamluks, byorigin Turks from theEurasian steppes, conformedto thepatternof alien rule intheNearEast,asdidthechiefchallenge to their newempire,theMongols,whobythe late1250shadpenetrated

Iraq and Syria. Baghdad hadbeen sacked and the lastcaliph executed in 1258;FrankishAntiochhadbecomea client and Syria brieflyoccupied. The defeat of aMongol army by theMamluks of Egypt inSeptember 1260 at Ain JalutinthevalleyofJezreelhelpeddetermine which of the twodominantNearEasternforceswould rule in Syria and

roughly where the frontierbetweenthemwouldfall inapoliticalsettlementthatlasteduntiltheOttomanconquestoftheMamlukEmpire in 1517.TheFranksand theirwesternalliescouldonlywatch.The final expulsion of the

Franks, begun by thefearsome Baibars andcompleted by al-AshrafKhalil in 1291, carried anegative charge generated by

theconquerorsnottheFranksthemselves. In annexing theChristian strongholds of thecoast, the Mamluksdeliberatelyrazedthemtotheground, thereby, in H. E.Mayer’swords,achievingthe“destruction of the ancientSyro-Palestinian citycivilization.” The decisiveverdicts of 1260 and 1291crowned the Mamluks asvictors in the long struggle

over which foreign groupwould rule in Egypt, Syria,and Palestine—Greeks,Kurds, Turks, Franks. Thelastweremerelyoneofmanywholostout;theirroleinthereconfiguration of thepolitical map intrusive, notdecisive.

This nineteenth-century

painting by Dominique Papety

showsthe1291SiegeofAcre,in

which al-Ashraf Khalil’s assault

drove theFranks fromAcre, one

of the last bastions in the

CrusaderKingdomofJerusalem.

StevenRunciman, themostread anglophone historian ofthe Crusades, thought theCrusades proved to be adisaster for Christendom

because the ByzantineEmpire was weakened as aresult of the FourthCrusade.Permanently undermined,Byzantium “could no longerguard Christendom againstthe Turk,” this incapacityultimately handing “theinnocent Christians of theBalkans” to “persecution andslavery.”Yetitmaybeworthconsideringthatthevictoryofthe Mamluks in the second

half of the thirteenth centurysaved not only western Asiafrom the Mongols butsouthern and eastern Europetoo.ThefailureofByzantiumto defend itself in 1203–04did not augur well for anyputative role as a bastionagainst future Turkishattacks; the occupation ofpartsof theGreekEmpirebyFranksandVenetiansat leastensured lasting western

investment in the laterresistancetotheOttomans.Itsdisastrous failure toaccommodate the crusadersbefore1204makes it hard tobelieve Byzantium left toitself would have coped anybetter with the Turks. Whilescarcely interested in theminutiaeof localpoliticsandreligion, the Mongols mighthave proved even moredisagreeable conquerors than

theOttomans.Although fatalto the Franks of Outremer,the Mamluk triumphrestricted the Mongols toPersia and preserved anIslamic status quo that canonly be condemned ongrounds of race or religion.Precisely the same can besaidofthosewhoassumethemalignity ofOttoman rule orthatfractiousChristianruleinthe Balkans would have

proved more beneficial totheir inhabitants. While easyto re-fight the Crusades inmodern historical or culturalprejudices, it remainsunprofitable if not actuallyharmful. One legacy of theCrusades was theestrangement of Greek andLatin Christendom, but notthetriumphoftheTurk.

This stained glass

window (c. 1450) in

the Musée National

du Moyen Age

(NationalMuseumof

the Middle Ages) in

Paris, depicts

BernardofClairvaux

(d. 1153), who

preached and

recruited for the

SecondCrusade.

FIVE

HolyWar

CHRISTIAN HOLY WAR,

ALTHOUGH A conceptualoxymoron, has occupied acentralplaceinthecultureofChristianity. Crusadingrepresented merely one

expression of this warriortradition. Urban II did notinventChristianholywars in1095; neither did they ceasewith the demise of theCrusades; nor were theCrusades the onlymanifestation of medievalreligious violence. However,the Crusades have appearedalmost uniquely disreputablebecause of the apparentdiametric and exultant

reversal of the teaching ofChrist and the appropriationof the language of spiritualstruggle and the doctrine ofpeace for the promotion ofwar,exquisitelydemonstratedin the ubiquitous use of theimage of the cross. In theNew Testament seeminglythe ultimate symbol ofChrist’s explicit refusal tofightorevenresistinthefaceof death; in the hands of

crusade propagandists thecross became a sign ofobedience through thephysical sacrifice of martialcombat,awarbanner,aniconof military victory throughfaith,themarkofthose,inthewords of a charter of onedeparting crusader in 1096,who fought “forGod againstpagans and Saracens” andsaw themselves as “militesChristi,” warriors or knights

of Christ. “If any man willcome after me, let him denyhimselfandtakeuphiscross,and follow me” (Matthew16:24) appears an incrediblebattle-cry in the context ofChrist’swordsinGethsemane(Matthew 26:52-4): “Put upagain thy sword… all theythat take the sword shallperishwiththesword.”This transformation can be

illustrated startlingly in the

writings of Bernard ofClairvaux (d.1153), chiefpropagandist and recruitingagentfortheSecondCrusade,one of the most influentialinterpreters of Christianspirituality of the entireMiddleAges.Asiftocounterdirectly those whocondemned the church’sadvocacy of holy war asunchristian, Bernard tookNewTestamentpassagesand

radically reinterpreted them.TheEpistlesofSt.Paulusedmilitary metaphor toemphasize the revolutionarynature of the new faith incontrast to the Roman worlddominated by religiouslysanctioned military systems:“We do not war after theflesh: for theweaponsofourwarfare are not carnal” (IICorinthians: 3-4). In theEpistle to theEphesiansPaul

descants on this spiritualmilitarytheme:

Put on the whole armor ofGod,thatyemaybeabletostand against the wiles ofthedevil.Forwewrestlenotagainst flesh and blood…Standtherefore,havingyourloins girt about with truth,and having on thebreastplateofrighteousness,andyourfeetshodwith the

preparationofthegospelofpeace…takingtheshieldoffaith…and take thehelmetof salvation, and the swordof the spirit, which is thewordofGod.

(Ephesians6:11-17)

Bernard redirects Paul inhis tract welcoming thefoundingof theTemplars, “a

new sort of knighthood…fighting indefatigably adoublefightagainstfleshandblood as well as against theimmaterial forces of evil inthe skies”; “the knight whoputs the breastplate of faithon his soul in the same wayas he puts a breastplate ofiron on his body is trulyintrepid and safe fromeverything… so forward insafety, knights, and with

undauntedsoulsdriveoff theenemies of the Cross ofChrist.” While not entirelynew—similar transmutationsofPaul’sspiritualarmordateback to the eighth century atleast—the volte face seemscomplete.

ScriptureandClassicalTheoryThe ideology of crusadingmay thus appear casuistic in

itsinterpretationofScripture,ifnotdownrightmendacious.Yet the contradiction of holywarinpursuitofthedoctrinesof peace and forgivenessboasted long pedigrees.While remaining a utopianmodel, the behavior andcircumstances of the EarlyChurchsoonceasedtoreflecttheidealismorexperiencesofChristianity. AlthoughBiblical authority remained

one of the cornerstones ofbelief, literalism provedintellectually and culturallyuntenable and Christianityevolved only indirectly as aScriptural faith. Thefoundation texts of the Oldand New Testaments neededtranslation, literally andconceptually, to nurtureaccessible and sustainableinstitutions of thought andobservanceinacontextofthe

lives of active believerswithinatemporalchurch.Theworksoftheso-calledChurchFathers (notably Origen ofAlexandria, Ambrose ofMilan, Augustine of Hippo,and Pope Gregory I) foundwaysofreconcilingthepuristdoctrine of the BeatitudeswiththeGreco-Romanworld.A mass of apocryphalscripture, imitativehagiography, legends, relic

cults, and lengtheningtraditionexpressed,informed,anddevelopedpopularbelief,while ecclesiastical andpolitical authorities codifiedarticles of faith, such as theNicene Creed (325). Thechurch’s teaching on warexemplifiedthisprocess.

The spectacular stained glass

rose windows of Chartres

Cathedralcombinethestoriesand

prophecies of theOld Testament

with aspects of the New

Testament.

The charity texts of theNew Testament insisting onforgiveness were interpretedas applicable only to privatepersons not the behavior ofpublic authorities, to whom,

bothGospelandPaulinetextscould bemarshaled to show,obedience was due. InJerome’sLatinversionoftheBible, the Vulgate (c.405),which became the standardtextinthemedievalwest,theexclusive word for enemy inthe New Testament isinimicus, a personal enemy,not hostis, a public enemy.Paul, conceding that “kingsand those in authority”

protectthefaithfulin“aquietand peaceable life,”sanctioned public violence topolice a sinful world. Forthosejustifyingreligiouswar,the Old Testament suppliedrich pickings. In contrast tomodern Christians not ofBiblical fundamentalistpersuasion, the medievalchurch placed considerableimportance on the OldTestament for its apparent

historicity, its moral stories,its prophecies, and itsprefiguring of the NewCovenant,asinthethirteenth-century stained glasswindows in the nave ofChartresCathedralwhereOldTestamentscenesarecoupledby their exegeticalequivalents from the New.Bible stories operatedessentially on two levels(although medieval exegetes

distinguished as many asfour): literalanddivine truth.In the Old Testament theChosen People of theIsraelitesfightbattlesfortheirfaith and their God, whocommands violence, protectshis loyal warriors, and isHimself “a man of war”(Exodus15:3).NotonlydoesGod intervene directly, butHe instructs His agents tokill: Moses enlisting the

Levites to slaughter thefollowers of theGoldenCalf(Exodus 32:26–8); Godinstructing Saul to annihilatethe Amalekites “men andwomen, infant and suckling”(I Samuel 15:3). Warriorheroes adorn the Scripturallandscape—Joshua, Gideon,David. In the Books of theMaccabees, recording thebattles of Jews against theruleofHellenicSeleucidsand

their Jewish allies in thesecond century BCE, butcheryandmutilation are praised astheworkofGod throughHisfollowers,whoseweaponsareblessed and who meet theirenemies with hymns andprayers. “So, fighting withtheir hands and praying toGod in their hearts, they laidlow no less than thirty-fivethousand and were greatlygladdened by God’s

manifestation” (IIMaccabees15:27–8). Many OldTestament texts, especiallythose concerning Jerusalem(for example Psalm 79: “OGod, the heathen are comeinto thine inheritance; thyholy temple have theydefiled; they have laidJerusalem on heaps,” wereeasily incorporated intocrusading apologetics andpolemic,butnowherewasthe

idiom of crusading moreapparentthanintheBooksoftheMaccabees.Of course, stories regarded

by some as authorizinglegitimate or even religiouswarfare could be interpretedby others as prefiguringChristian spiritual struggle,the sense of St. Paul as wellas many medievalcommentators, or consignedto the Old Covenant not the

New Dispensation. Trickierfor Christian pacifists werethe apocalyptic passages inthe New Testament. TheRevelation of St. Johndescribed a violent LastJudgment when celestialarmies followed “The Wordof God” and judged, madewar, smote nations, and trod“the winepress of thefierceness and wrath ofAlmighty God” (Revelation

19:11-15). It is nocoincidence that one of themost famous and vivideyewitnessdescriptionsofthemassacre in Jerusalem onJuly 15, 1099, quotedverbatim Revelation 14:20:’And the winepress wastroddenwithout the city, andblood came out of thewinepress, even unto thehorses’ bridles.” Apart fromexamples of godly mayhem,

theBibleimposedagenerallyprovidential and specificallyprophetic dimension onChristian holy war that ishardtounderestimate.Ifwarsare seen as God’s will, thenthey act as part of Hisscheme,eitherinimitationofpast religious wars or, morepotently, as fulfillment ofBiblical prophecy, a fixationas appealing to crusaders aslatertoOliverCromwell.

Christian holy war,therefore, derived from theBible its essential elements:Divine command;identification with theIsraelites, God’s chosen; anda sense of acting in eventsleading toward theApocalypse. The historicaland emotional vision of theholywarriorencompassedthetemporal and supernatural.The fighting was only too

material but the purposewastranscendent. However, it isdifficult to see how even themost bellicose interpretationofScripturealonecouldhaveproduced such an acceptanceand later promotion ofwarfare without the need toreconcile Christianity withtheRomanstate inthefourthand fifth centuries CE. WhiletheBible borewitness to theLawofGod,oldandnew,the

Helleno-Roman tradition haddeveloped laws of man onwhichChristianwriters drewto devise a new theoreticaljustification for war.Aristotle, in the fourthcentury BCE, had coined thephrase “justwar” to describewar conducted by the state“for the sake of peace”(Politics I:8 and VII:14). Tothisideaofajustend,Romanlaw added the just cause

consequent on one partybreaking an agreement (pax,peace,derivedfromtheLatinpangere, meaning to enterintoacontract)orinjuringtheother. Just war couldtherefore be waged fordefense, recovery of rightfulproperty, or punishmentprovided this was sanctionedbylegitimateauthority,thatisthe state. Cicero argued forright conduct—virtue or

courage—in fighting a justwar. Consequently, allRome’sexternalwarsagainsthostes, public enemies,especially barbarians, wereregardedasjustwars.With the fourth-century

recognition ofChristianity asthe official religion of theempire,Christiansshoulderedduties as good citizens,encouraged to fight in justwars for the defense of the

Christian empire. For theRoman state, religiousenemiesjoinedtemporalonesas legitimate targets for war:pagan barbarians andreligious heretics within theempirewhocouldbeequatedwith traitors. However, nosooner had Christian writerssuch as Ambrose of Milan(d.397) integrated Christianacceptance of war based onthe model of the Israelites

with the responsibilities andideology of Romancitizenship than the politicalcollapse of the empire in thewest threatened tounderminethewholetheoreticalbasisofChristian just war. Thisconundrum was resolved byAugustine of Hippo (d.430)who, in passages scatteredunsystematically through hiswritings, combined ClassicalandBiblicalideasofholyand

just war to produce generalprinciples independent of theChristian/Roman Empire. TotheHelleno-Romanlegalideaof right causes and ends,Augustine added a Christianinterpretation ofmoral virtueto right intent and authority.From his diffuse commentsthree familiar essentialsemerged: just cause, definedas defensive or to recoverrightfulpossession;legitimate

authority; right intent byparticipants. Thus war,inherently sinful, couldpromoterighteousness.Theseattributes form the basis ofclassic Christian just wartheory, as presented, forexample,byThomasAquinas(1225–74).ButAugustinedidnot regard violence as anideal, preferring theworldofthe spirit to that of the flesh.His justification of war

lookedtothewarsoftheOldTestament: “thecommandment forbiddingkilling was not broken bythosewhohavewagedwaronthe authority of God.”Augustine was implicitlymoving the justification ofviolence from lawbooks toliturgies, from the secular tothe religious. However, hislack of definition inmergingholyandjustwar,extendedin

a number of pseudo-Augustinian texts andcommentaries, produced aconvenient conceptualplasticity that characterizedthe development of Christianattitudes to war over thesubsequent millennium andmore. The language of thebellum justum becamecurrent,whilewhatwasoftendescribed came closer tobellumsacrum.Thisfusionof

ideas might conveniently becalled religious war, warsconducted for and by theChurch, sharing features ofholy and just war, in aprotean blend that allowedwar to become valid as anexpression of Christianvocation second only tomonasticismitself.

Cicero, seenhere in the façade

of Rome’s Palazzo di Giustizia

(Palace of Justice), defined the

parameters of a just war, often

wagedagainstbarbarians.

A just war was notnecessarily a holy war,although all holy wars were,per se, just. While holy wardepended on God’s will,constituted a religious act,was directed by clergy ordivinely sanctioned rulers,andofferedspiritual rewards,just war formed a legal

category justified by secularnecessity, conduct and aim,attracting temporal benefits.Thefusionofthetwobecamecharacteristic of laterChristian formulations.Where Rome survived, inByzantium, the easternempireofConstantinople,thecoterminous relation ofChurchandStaterenderedallpublic war in some senseholy, in defense of religion,

approved by the Church.However, Byzantine warfareremained a secular activity,for all its Divine sanction,not, as it became in lateeleventh-century westernEurope, a penitential act ofreligious votaries. Elsewherein Christendom, while theideals of pacifism remainedfiercely defended by themonastic movement and itsideal of the contemplative

life, Christians and theirChurch had to confront newsecular attitudes to warfareconsequent on politicaldominationbyaChristianizedGermanic military elite andnew external threats fromnon-Christians.

NewDefendersoftheFaithintheEarlyMiddleAgesWaroccupied a central placein the culture as well as

politics of the GermanicsuccessorstatestotheRomanEmpirefromthefifthcentury.The great German historianoftheoriginsofthecrusadingmentality, Carl Erdmann,arguedthatforthenewrulersof the west war provided “aformofmoralaction,ahighertype of life than peace.”Heavily engaged inconvertingthesewarlords,theChristian Church necessarily

hadtorecognizetheirvalues,not least because, with thecollapse of Roman civilinstitutions, economic andsocial order revolved aroundthe fiscal and humanorganization of plunder,tribute, and dependent bandsof warriors held together bykinship and lordship. TheirGodsweretribaldeliverersofearthlyvictoryandreward. Ithas been said that the early

medievalarmy, theexercitus,assumeda roleas thepivotalpublic institution in andthrough which operatedjustice, patronage, politicaldiscipline, diplomacy, andceremonies of communalidentity, usually with theimprimaturofreligion,paganorChristian.TheeffectoftheconversionoftheseGermanicpeoples worked in twodirections: the Christianizing

of theirwarrior ethic and themilitarizingoftheChurch.Contemporary descriptions

of the conversion and earlyChristian kings of the newpolitical order are pepperedwith martial heroes in thestyle of Constantine himself,such as Clovis the Frank(d.511) or Oswald ofNorthumbria (d.644).Conversely, Christianevangelists and holy men

were depicted exercisingphysical aggression asGod’sagents in thestyleof theOldTestament Moses.Unsurprisingly, Germanicwarrior values infected thelanguage of the faith beingconveyed,evenifonlyintheseedbed of metaphor. In theeighth-century Anglo-SaxonDreamof theRood,Christ isdepicted as “the youngwarrior,” “the Lord of

Victories”;deathonthecrossasabattle,withHeavenasortof Valhalla. A ninth-centuryOldGermanpoeticversionoftheGospelstoryshowsChristasalordofmen,“agenerousmead-giver,” his disciples awar band traveling inwarships, Peter “the mightynoble swordsman.” Whilefiercely resisted by manyacademics and monks, thismilitarizedmentalityreceived

the powerful confirmation ofevents.

King Clovis of the Franks (d.

644), shown in this sixteenth-

centuryengraving,wasoneofthe

martial heroes of Christianity in

theearlyMiddleAges.

The historical as well asliterary type of the earlymedieval warrior wasCharlemagne(d.814),kingofthe Franks and, from 800,emperorofthewest,hiswarsagainst pagan Saxons and

Avarsportrayedbyeulogists,official propaganda, and theChurch in termsof theFaith.Given that forcibleconversion acted as part ofhis policy of subduing theSaxons, the image reflectedactual war aims. Throughprayers,blessingsofwarriorsand their arms, liturgies, anddifferentialscalesofpenance,theFrankishChurchelevatedtheseconflictsintoholywars.

More widely, the Churchpresided over a politicalcultureinwhichthefigureofthe armed warriorincreasingly receivedreligious as well as socialapprobation, a developmentsharply illustrated incontemporary saints’ lives.Warfare came to berecognized as possessingpositive moral as well aspolitical value. As with the

RomanEmpireitprofessedtobe reviving, in theCarolingian Empire of theeighth and ninth centuries,publicwarwasipsofactojustand sanctioned byGod. Thisbecame even more apparentfrom the mid-ninth centurywhen,with the disintegrationof Carolingian power,westernEuropewasbesetbynew external attacks fromMuslims, Vikings, and

Magyars which lent anurgent,dynamicqualitytothepractice as well as theory ofChristian warfare. Politicalandreligioussurvivalbecamesynonymousasaconceptofareligious community,Christendom (Christianitas),replaced the disintegratingpolitical community of theFrankish Empire. Confrontedby Muslims threateningRome itself, Pope John VIII

(872–82) offered penitentialindulgences remitting thepenalties of sin to thosewhofought anddied fighting.HispredecessorLeo IV (847–55)had similarly promisedsalvation to warriors againstthe infidels. Theidentification of religion andwar surfaced across westernEurope. Monkishpropagandists invariablycalled theDanish enemies of

Alfred,kingofWessex(871–99), pagans; his commandersdecorated their swords withChristian motifs and theirbattles were accompanied byprayersandalms.AFrankishmonastic annalist similarlydescribed Danish attacks asan “affront not to us but toHim who is all powerful.”Such explicit Christianmilitancy,designedtoinspireresistance and confirm

communalsolidarity,enlistedsome unlikely recruits. EvenSt. Benedict (d.c.550),founder of the maincontemplative monasticmovementofwesternEurope,wasdepictedinthelaterninthcentury as fighting theVikings “with his left handdirecting and shielding thecavalry and with his rightkillingmanyenemieswithhisstaff.”

This militarization ofwesternChristianculture thatlong predated the Crusadesshould not be exaggerated.Themonastic ideal persisted,Aelfric of Cerne, abbot ofEynsham, at the end of thetenthcentury insistingon themonks’ vocation as “God’schampions in the spiritualbattle,whofightwithprayersnotswords;itistheywhoarethe soldiers of Christ.”

Althoughexamplesofwarriorsaints, or saints who wereoncewarriors, proliferated inthe tenth and eleventhcenturies, the moral dangersof fighting continued to berecognized.However,atleastfrom Carolingian penitentialobservances onwards,churchmendrewadistinctionbetween killing in a publicconflict authorized by alegitimate secular (or

religious) authority, bellum,and illicit private war,sometimes distinguished bythe word guerra, thosefighting in the formerreceivinglighterpenancesfortheir killing than thoseengagedinthelatter.Still,theactualactofcombatremainedsinful; despite fighting undera papal banner in a causeconsidered by their clergy tobe just, William of

Normandy’s followers in1066were forced to performmodest penance for theslaughter they inflictedat theBattle of Hastings. The lateeleventh-century revolutionlay particularly in the settledtransformation of the actualviolence, rather than itspurpose, scale, or intent, intoapenitentialact.

This fifteenth-century fresco

showsSt.Benedict (diedc.550),

sometimesportrayedasawarrior

fighting the Vikings, in the

militant style of some Middle

AgesChristianimagery.

TheOriginsoftheCrusadeintheEleventhCenturyThe changing articulation ofthe long-held acceptance oflegitimate religious war thatcombined elements of the

Helleno-Roman and Biblicaltraditions was fashioned asmuch by politicalcircumstance as by theology.Renewed attention toAugustinian theory from thelateeleventhcenturycameinresponse, not as aninspiration, to greaterecclesiastical militancy.Secular influences includedthe problem of publicauthority and social order

after the collapse ofCharlemagne’s empire in theninthand tenthcenturies; thealtered terms of the frontierconflicts with Islam, withChristians from the tenthcentury increasingly on theoffensive; and a greaterideological and politicalstridency of the papacy.Behind all of these lay thecultural identity between layand clerical rulers who

belonged to the samepropertied aristocracy.Bishops took the field inbattles, sometimes in armor,oftenattheheadoftheirownmilitary entourage,occasionally engaging inphysical combat. Equally,many of the most vicioussecular lordswere patrons ofmonasteries, went onexhausting and dangerouspilgrimages, and died in

monastic habits as associatemembersofreligiousorders.This cultural intimacy, a

feature of the whole of theearly Middle Ages, took ongreater significance in thedevelopment of holy war asthe apparatus of civilauthority devolveddownwards nearer to thehumanandmaterialresourcesonwhichallpowerdependedas public authority was

usurped by private lordships.Although less anarchic thanonce imagined, new socialconditions by the end of thetenth century encouragedviolence as a means ofsettling disputes as well asachieving more larcenous orterritorial ambitions. Thisfragmentation of power inwesternFrancia(moreorlessthe region from theRhine tothe Pyrenees, later the cradle

of the crusade), by negatingkingship, resulted inadeficitof effectivepublic arbitrationorpoliticaldiscipline.Insuchcircumstances, to secureprotection and status, manychurchmen deliberatelypromotedtheresponsibilityofmenofviolencetoprotectthechurch. To achieve this, theactivitiesofthewarriorhadtoreceiveexplicitpraisenotjuston the level of public wars

against pagans and heretics.This acceptance of the needforwarlike protectors can betraced in saints’ lives andmonastic chronicles thatexhibit a characteristicschizophrenia when tacklingthe gilded “faithful to God”who were also self-servingkillers, the contrast laterfavored by crusadeapologetics between militiaandmalitia.

The symbiotic relationshipof church and local militaryaristocracies found concreteexpression in formalproceedings organized bylocal or regional clergy toensurethephysicalprotectionandpolicingoftheirproperty.From the late tenth century,acrosstheduchyofAquitaineand Burgundy, laterspreading to northern Franceand the Rhineland, church

councils were convened thatproclaimed thePeaceofGodwith arms bearers swearing,in public ceremonies, toprotect those outside themilitary classes, effectivelychurchmen and theirproperty. From the 1020sspecific periods of weeks ormonths were designated asTrucesofGod, duringwhichall such violence shouldcease, again tobepolicedby

sworn warriors. Althoughsome have challenged thedirect influence of the Peaceand Truce of God on theorigins of crusading, theCouncil ofClermont in 1095authorizedaPeaceofGodatthesametimeasinitiatingtheJerusalem campaign. Theselocal churchmen, often inconcertwith regional counts,were not simply condemningillicitattacksontheirinterests

but approving, indeedpromoting, violence toprevent them. From beingcalledupon toblesswars forcauses sacred and profane,theChurch now assumed theroles of author and director,its warriors that of religiousvotaries.This trend received strong

impetus from the 1050sthrough the concern ofsuccessive popes with the

ideaandpracticeofholywaras a weapon to establish theindependence of the Churchfrom lay control, contest theauthority of the Germanemperor, ensure the politicalautonomy of theRoman see,and recover the lost lands ofChristendom. The moralstandingof thosewhofoughtfor the papal agenda becamean important aspect of thegeneral policy, both in the

needtoattractsupportandtoassert the uniqueness of thecause.

Evenbefore theFirstCrusade,

Pope Leo IX (1048–54) led

troops into battle in a regional

war, promising absolution in

returnfortheirenlistment.

In1053,LeoIX(1048–54),leading an army in personagainst the Normans ofsouthern Italy, offeredGerman troops remission ofpenance and absolution fortheirsins,atraditionfollowed

by his successors. Papalbanners were awarded to theNorman invaders of MuslimSicily (1060) and England(1066) and to the MilanesePatarines, street gangscontesting control of the cityagainst theimperialists inthe1060sand1070sinastruggleelevatedinpapalrhetorictoabellumDei,awarofGod.Tocombat the ecclesiasticalpower of Emperor Henry IV

(1056–1106)inGermanyandhis political ambitions inItaly, Pope Gregory VII(1073–85), one of whosefavorite quotations was“Cursed be he that keepethback his sword from blood”(Jeremiah 48:10), sought torecruit his own army, themilitia Sancti Petri. Papalapologists began to write ofanordopugnatorum,anorderof warriors, who fought “for

their salvation and thecommon good,” very muchthe target audience identifiedby Urban II in 1095. By theend of his pontificate,Gregory’s rhetorictransformed the status of hiswarriors, comparing theirservice in defense of theChurch as an imitation ofChrist’s suffering against“thosewhoaretheenemiesofthecrossofChrist.”Warhad

becomeanactofpenance.Anabortiveprojectforaneasternexpedition in 1074 proposedby Gregory VII to aidByzantium evinced manyelements later deployed byUrbanII.Gregoryreferred tothe mandate of God andexampleofChrist;thegoalofJerusalem; help for theeastern church as an act ofcharity; and the offer of“eternalreward.”Allthatwas

missing were the vow, thecross, and the associatedprivileges.

Pope Gregory VII (1073–85)

predated the Fin Crusade, but

preached for combining war and

pilgrimageinamarchtotheHoly

Sepulchre.

Thepapacy’sadvocacyofamore embracive theory andpracticeofholywarmirroredawider transformation in thereligiouslifeofeleventh-andtwelfth-century westernEurope from an essentially

local and cultish faith, withregional saints and liturgies,to one more regulated bypastoral uniformity, canonlaw, and internationalecclesiastical discipline.Devotion to saints and theirrelics became increasinglyuniversal, with a concurrentemphasisonthehistoricityofthe gospel stories, thehumanity of Christ, and thecult of the Virgin Mary,

which began to dominatechurch dedications acrossChristendom. Coupled withthe development of elaborateEaster rituals featuringChrist’s agonies for Man’sRedemptionandan increasedconcentration on theChristocentric aspects of theMass (for example the RealPresence, the use ofcrucifixes, and so on), theimage of the Holy Land, of

Christ’s suffering, and ofChristian obligationpenetrated far beyond thereach of papal rhetoric. Theincreased popularity ofinternationalorBiblicalsaintsreflected anxiety oversalvation that the newconception of war addresseddirectly. The perceivedcelestial clout of saints hadlong been a factor in theirlevelofpopularity,leadingto

the strenuous promotion oflocal shrines by theirguardians and the reciprocalgifts of alms and propertyfrom the faithful. Penanceemerged as a most urgentissue for laymen because themethods for laymen to attainremission of the penalties ofsin remained rudimentary.The problem may haveappeared especially acute forlay arms bearers,

paradoxically because theirfunctionhadcomeundersuchclose ecclesiastical scrutinyand acceptance. If monasticchartersandchroniclescanbebelieved, penitential waranswered a genuine cravingto expiate sin. The FirstCrusade drew excited praiseas “a new way of salvation”forthemilitaryclasses.Apartfrom donations tomonasteries so that monks

could pray for their souls,increasingly laymen in theeleventh century foundpilgrimages promoted by theclergy as a means to expiatesin,withJerusalemprominentin practice and imagination.Psychologically, if notlegally, religious wars,especially against distanttargets such as infidels, lentthemselves to identificationwithpilgrimagesasbothwere

conducted for God andinvolved journeys, always apowerful spiritual metaphor.Gregory VII’s reference togoing on to the HolySepulchre in his 1074 plansuggesteda fusionofwar (tohelp eastern Christians) andpilgrimage, a connectionrepeated by Urban II ingranting indulgences in 1089tothosecolonizingTarragonaon the Muslim frontier in

Spain. The Pisans whoattackedMahdiainTunisiain1087fittedinapilgrimagetoRome. The concept of anarmed pilgrimage hasfrequently been identified asthe key to explain the novelappeal of the expeditionpreached by Urban II,offeringafamiliarframeforanewsecularactofpenance.However, there remain

problems with this

interpretation of Urban’sscheme. On the one hand,armed pilgrimages toJerusalem pre-dated 1095; atleast one group of armedGermanpilgrimsin1064alsoworecrosses.Ontheother,inhis correspondence in 1095–96, Urban avoided anyexplicit reference topilgrimage, talking insteadofa military expedition(expeditio) to “restrain the

savagery of the Saracens bytheir arms.” The portrayal ofthe Jerusalem war as apilgrimage emerged duringthe recruitment process,possiblyfromtheclergywhohad tobroadcast themessageand articulate crusaders’motives when compilingrecords of their fundraising.Urban’s penitential journeycould best be understoodcanonically as a pilgrimage,

with the emphasis on itsspiritual quality. The pope’slanguage and many charterswere less ambivalent, callingfor the violent expulsion ofthe infidel from the holyplaces “to fight for GodagainstpagansandSaracens,”asoneBurgundiancharterputit. Images of infidel atrocity,brutality, and force permeateUrban’s letters stressing thelegitimacyofthewar,bothin

terms of right authority (thepope’s) and right intent(“devotionalone”) to counterany unease at such a blatantcall toarms.Earlyresponses,such as the Rhinelandmassacres, indicated thecentrality of violence in theenterprise. The currenthistoriographicalemphasisonthe pious motives ofcrusaders can obscure thedirect relationship between

piety and violence thatinfluential elements in theChurch had willinglyencouraged,recognizingthemas mutually engagedmentalities: service to Christas physical vengeance; thedangers of campaigning asthe imitation of Christ’ssufferings; war as an act ofcharity. In addressing aviolent society, Urban, aFrencharistocrataswellasa

former monk, did notcompromise with its values:heandhisideologywerepartof it. Charters provide asmuchevidence formartial asfor pious responses to theFirstCrusade.Eventhelettersofcrusadersonthemarcharesparing in their associationwith pilgrimage, although by1099 and after the linkbecameubiquitous.Asaholywar, transcendent, spiritual,

emotive, the Jerusalemjourneywas rendered specialby the plenary indulgencesand the elevated goal of theHoly Sepulchre. Given itsstated objective—Jerusalem—an armed pilgrimage mayhave seemed an appropriateanalogy to clericalobservers,as nervous of unashamedinnovation as of unfetteredviolence. Only by virtue ofthe Jerusalem journey

becoming a habit did itrequire fitting into theexisting structure ofdevotional exercises. Urbanseemed to have conceived ofthe operation as unique andunrepeatable; he preached itopenlyasholywarnotarmedpilgrimage,anewvisionofaveryoldidea.Western Christianity held

no monopoly on holy war.The Byzantine Empire

retained the Roman unity ofChurchandStatethatallowedall State conflicts to attractecclesiastical blessing. Greekemperors portrayedthemselves as champions ofthe Church, especially whenfighting pagan Slavs inBulgaria or Muslims in theNear East. While neverinterfering with practicaldiplomacy, Byzantine holywar rhetoric could adopt

motifsfamiliarinthewest,asin975whenJohnITzimisces(969–76) invaded Syria andnorthern Palestine and mayhave dangled the prospect, ifonlyinhispropaganda,ofthereconquestoftheholysitesofJerusalem. Byzantine holywar asserted an integraldimension of public policy,while never attracting theassociation of violence aspenance.Itlackedthenovelty

or the political and spiritualautonomous dynamism of itswestern counterpart, hencethe slightly jaded,condescending superiorityexpressed by Greekobservers, such as AnnaComnena (1083–1153),daughter and biographer ofEmperor Alexius I, at theenthusiasm of the earlycrusaders.By contrast, the Muslim

jihadhas regularlyand lazilybeen compared with westernChristian holy war and thecrusade. Unlike the crusade,under Islamic law derivedfrom the Koran, jihad,struggle, is enjoined on allmembers of the Muslimcommunity. Unlike thecrusade, according toclassical Islamic theorytraditionally dating from theseventh and eighth centuries

but possibly later, the jihadtakes two forms: the greater(al-jihad al-akbar), theinternal struggle to achievepersonalpurity,aconceptnottoo far removed from St.Paul’s martial metaphors forthe spiritual life; and thelesser (al-jihad al-asghar),the military struggle againstinfidels.Bothwereobligatoryon able-bodied Muslims, butwhile the formerexistedasa

permanent individualobligation, the lesser jihadcould be interpreted as acommunal activity. Unlikethe crusade and Christianholy war, to which theIslamicjihadappears tohaveowed nothing (and viceversa),jihadwasfundamentalto the Muslim faith, a sixthpillar. The essence of jihadremained as a spiritualexercise. Its operation

depended on context. In theMuslim lands, the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam), agrudging religious tolerancewas guaranteed by earlyIslamic texts, at least for thePeopleoftheBook,JewsandChristians; instead ofpersecution or enforcedconversion they moreprofitably paid a special polltax, the jizya. Pace modernsentimentalists and

apologists, there existed littlegenerosity in such tolerance,merely pragmatism. Bycontrast,beyondIslamicrule,in theDaral-harb (HouseofWar), non-Muslim politicalstructures and individualswere open to attack as, inKoranic theory, the wholeworld must recognize orembrace Islam (whichmeanssurrender, that is to God)through conversion or

subjugation. As withChristian holy war,circumstancesdetermined themujahiddin nature andconduct of jihad as much astheory.Infrontierareas,suchas in Spain or Anatolia,groups of ghazi ormujahiddin holy warriors,flourished as mercenaries, intribal groups or, as in themilitary ribats of MuslimSpain, in quasi-monastic

communities.Withthezealofnew converts, the SeljukTurks gave the jihad a newimpetusalongtheborderwithByzantium, but forgenerations before thespiritualrevivalofthetwelfthcentury there was littleattention paid within theMuslim Near East to martialas opposed to spiritual jihad.It remains a moot pointwhether the advent of the

crusaders or fundamentalistrevivalismoriginating furthereast excited the newmilitaryfanaticism espoused by thetwelfth-century Zengids andAyyubids. In later periods,the dominance of theOttomansandanuncertainty,which persists, about theexistence of a genuine Daral-Islam, complicatedattitudes to jihad. However,the genesis, nature, and

implementation of jihadcannot be equated directlywith those of the crusade; itoperated and operates in averydifferentideologicalandreligious value system, withdifferent inspirations andjustifications, even if itspower to inspire and itsphysicalconsequencescanbeequallybloodyforitsvictimsandobsessiveforitsinitiates.

Jihad, a pillar of the Muslim

faith, means “struggle.” The

greater jihad is the internal or

personal struggle, and the lesser

jihad is the struggle in the

believer’sdailyactivity.

HolyWar,Crusade,andChristianSocietyafter1095Inmedieval Christendom themalleable contingency of thecrusade in concept andpracticeensureditspopularityand longevity. The defineduniqueness of the Jerusalemjourneyallowed its essentials—thevow,thecross,plenary

indulgence, and temporalprivileges—to be transferredto other theatres of religiousand ecclesiastical conflict onthe principle of equivalence:Spain, the Baltic, internalenemies of the papacy, andheretics.Thesuccessof1099silenced most critics as wellas establishing later conduct.Holy war, commanded byGod,earningspiritualreward,continued to provide an

important weapon in thepapacy’s armory. To signalespecial gravity (or papalfavor),acomparisonwiththeJerusalem war could bedrawn. However, theJerusalemmodelexertedonlylimited influence on canonlaw and in no sense becamethe universal or exclusiveform of Christian holy war.Itsmostprofoundandlastinginnovation came with the

twelfth- and thirteenth-century creations of militaryreligious orders,embodiments of theoxymoronic nature ofChristian holy war, whosemembersbecame,uniquelyinChristian society, permanent,professional holy warriors.As a holy war, the crusadefelloutside thecategories forjustwar explored indetail intheDecretum (first redaction

c.1139, enlarged edition by1158)traditionallyascribedtoGratian of Bologna, its legalimplicationsderivingfromitsassociatedprivilegesstandingapartfromboththeacademicattempts to define and limitwarfareandtheexperienceofbattles of the cross. Awayfrom the Curia, especially infrontier regions onChristendom’s northern andsouthern borders, where

traditions of inter-communaland inter-faith conflictsreadily merged, holy warofferedanatural recourse, itsacceptability parallel to thatof crusading, deriving fromsimilar cultural impulses, butnot necessarily narrowlydetermined by the Jerusalemwar. TheDanishwriter SaxoGrammaticus (c.1200)carefully cast his heroes intheDanishwarsagainst their

neighbors in terms bothspecifically of crusade andmore generally of holy war.Forhis employerArchbishopAbsalon of Lund (d.1201), itwas “no less religious torepulsetheenemiesofpublicfaith than to uphold itsceremonies”; he was contenttomake “an offering to Godnot of prayers but of arms.”Similarly in Spain, thegranting of formal crusading

privileges acted within acontext of growingidentification of theReconquista with holy war;asearlyasc.1115, thepatronsaint, the Apostle St. James,was described in a northernSpanish chronicle as “theknightofChrist.”While the long tradition of

holywarcontinued tosupplythe emotional intensity for arange of Christian warfare,

the Jerusalem war and itsderivativesdidnotescapethescrutiny of lawyers andacademics who increasinglysought to integrate thecrusadeintoacomprehensivecanonical justification forviolence, rather than, as theappeals for the First andSecond Crusades implied,rely simply on Divinemandate and the individualdevotional standards of

participants. Until thethirteenth century, andarguablybeyond, the crusaderemained an ill-defined legalconcept.WhereChristianwarcoincided with classical justwar categories, as with thedefense of Outremer (“theheritage of Christ”), nationaldefense,orthesuppressionofheretics, fusionwithclassicaland Augustinian just warappeared obvious. In the

temporal sphere, it alsobecamenecessary, in clericaleyes,toproduceadetailedsetof legal conditionsdetermining the validity ofwarfare as crusade targetsdiversified around 1200, atthe same time as secularattitudes to violencecoalesced into social normsmanifested in the cult of“chivalry.” The morerespectable war became, the

more urgent the need for theChurch to define what wasandwhatwasnotsinfulaboutit, especially as Innocent IIIand his successorstransformed crusading into auniversalChristianobligationinvolvingallsociety.Thus,asan aspect of the pastoralreformation within thewesternchurch,holywar,notspecifically crusading,became tempered by theories

of the just war, so much sothat the mid-thirteenth-century canonist Hostiensiscame close to defining acrusade simply as a papallyauthorized just war. By theendofthefourteenthcentury,HonoréBonet (orBouvet) inthe Tree of Battles (1387)answered the question “Bywhat law or on what groundcanwar bemade against theSaracens?” with wholly

traditional arguments basedsolely on a just cause—occupation of Christian landor rebellion against Christianrule, and papal authority. Inthis fashion, the crusade hadbecome reintegrated into acharacteristic westernEuropean concept oflegitimate violence, catchingits inspiration from holy warand its legality, rules, andrestraints, if any, from

classical just war theory. Assuch the language, motifs,and institutions of crusadingpenetrated into conflictswherenoformalapparatusofcrusading existed, forexample the adoption ofcrosses by national armies,such as the Danes c.1200 orthe English in the fourteenthcentury. So pervasive werethe symbols and habits ofcrusading that they could be

turned to any politicalconflict that boasted anideological tinge, even in themost contradictory ofcircumstances. Crosses wereoffered enemies of papalcrusaders in southernGermanyin1240.Duringhisrisingagainstwhathesawasthe misgovernment of HenryIII of England in 1263–65,Simon de Montfort’s rebelsdonned the white crusader

crosses of the English kings,traditional since the ThirdCrusade, to fight royalistcrusaders. The prominencelentholywarbytheCrusadescontributed to the familiarwestern European habit ofwarring parties of more orless whatever descriptioninvoking self-righteousreligiosity in support of theircause, a habit, exported toEuropean settlements around

the world from the seventhcentury, that remains currentinthetwenty-firstcentury.

In this nineteenth-century

Laurits Tuxen painting, the

martial Bishop Absalon of

Roskilde topples the statue of

SlavicdeitySvantevit.

Two crusaders in a medieval

fresco, from an Italian cathedral,

represent the ideal qualities of a

crusaderknight:pietyandpower.

Whatever its legal frame,crusading operated as theultimate manifestation ofconviction politics inmedieval western Europe,entrenchinganarrowculturaland religious exclusivity.When crusaders sackedLisboninOctober1147,theymurdered the local MozarabChristianbishopalongsidehis

fellow Arabic-speakingMuslim neighbors beforehappily installing anEnglishman, Gilbert ofHastings, as the new bishop.The failure of the LatinChurch hierarchy easily tocooperate or combine withhigher ranks of the easternchurches in Outremer or,later, Greece was notorious.Although inherent inallholywars, demonization of

opponents reached extremelevels in crusading rhetoric,reflecting both a literarygenre and a worldviewconducive to a siegementality, a form of culturalparanoia so often theunderbelly of culturalassertiveness. Racism andintoleranceofminoritieswerenot caused by the Crusades.Indeed,bothintheBalticandSpain, legal, linguistic,

cultural, and blood racismdeepened in the centuriesafter the main conquest bywarriors of the cross.Yet, inanti-Jewish pogroms andwars against heretics anddissent, crusading helpeddefine a rancid aspect of apersecuting mentality thatcameasthealmostinevitableconcomitantofaChurchbentonsupremacyanduniformitytosecureitspastoralendsand

secular rulers eager forideological sanction for theirwars.As holy war addressed

fundamental issues ofChristian identity and, itwasfrequently proclaimed,Christian survival, itselements remainedembeddedinEuropeansocietyaswellasproviding a cutting edge inthe expansion of LatinChristendom southwards,

eastwards, and northwards.The habit of crusading diedhard; in the fifteenth centurycrusading formulae werenatural appendages for theexpansionofEuropeanpowerdownthewestcoastofAfricaand into the easternAtlantic,as they were in the religiouswarsinBohemiaaswellasindefense against theTurks. Inthe sixteenth century andbeyond, the Ottomans kept

the images and occasionallythe reality of the war of thecrossalive,whiletheinternalreligious divisions in Europeushered in a period ofreligiouswarsnolessviciousin commitment and butcherythan anything witnessed inprevious centuries. Somehistorians would argue thatthe period of the Crusadesdefined Christianity’saffection for holy war—far

fromit.TheCrusadesformedonly one articulation ofChristian holy war, whoseorigins long pre-dated 1095and whose legacy refused tofade. Even in a supposedlymore secular age, self-righteous, ideologicallyjustifiedwarfarepersists.Themodernworld has embraced,variously with horror andenergy,ideological,religious,andpseudo-religiousviolence

as well as racist, nationalist,and anti-Semitic pogroms onan industrial scale, all in thecontext of justifyingmoralities. The moral highground of the twenty-firstcentury, whether shaded bythe banners of religion,reason, capitalism, orfreedom, still lies pittedwiththe rank shell-holes of holywar.

A medieval map

from Robert the

Monk’sChronicleof

the Crusades

(c.1099) shows at its

center the holy city

ofJerusalem.

SIX

TheBusinessoftheCross

CRUSADING WAS NOT A

SPONTANEOUS ACT. Anindividual rush of convictionor the sudden collective

convulsion of a crowdmightprovoke the initial act ofcommitment, the adoption ofthe cross. However, thetranslation of that obligationinto action depended onpersonal, political, social,financial, and economicpreparation and planning andgenerated widely diffusedlegal and fiscal institutions.No cross, no crusade, butequally no money, no

crusade; no group, nocrusade; no leadership, nocrusade; no transport, nocrusade. If this soundsreductive, it is. Piety andwhat may pass for religiousenergy contribute to anexplanation of motive andcampaign morale. Armiesmaymarchontheirstomachs,but it is difficult to makethem fight and die without acause, without some internal

dynamic that acts beyondreason to send warriors overthetoporstandtheirground.But all the passion in theuniverse could not, cannot,create war, crusading or not,without the organization andmanipulation of recruitment,finance, logistics, militarystructure—andideas.

PreachingPreaching demonstrates this,

providing some ofcrusading’s most familiarimages. A preacher, arrivinginatownorvillagebearingatale of disaster, a call tobattle,apromiseofsalvation,and a knapsack of crosses,converts his audience by hisfervor and eloquence alone.Urban II at Clermontprovidedtheprototype,Christand John the Baptist theimagined models. Such

scenes punctuate crusadehistory: the inspirationalBernard of Clairvaux on thehillside at Vézelay in 1146;the prosaic ArchbishopBaldwin of Canterburystomping around Wales in1188;thecharismaticFulkofNeuilly stirring up northernFrance around 1200; thesophisticated James of Vitrybeguiling the rich women ofGenoain1216.Yetpreaching

worked within tightlyorganized programs ofinformation and recruitmentinwhichthesermonprovidedonlyafocus.Chroniclersandthe preachers themselvesidealized the process into aperfect systemof evangelismwhich engaged the faithfuldirectly with the orthodoxteaching of the Church, aswell as supplying a usefulstarting point for a didactic

narrative. In a semi-literatesociety,ceremonialrituals,ofwhich the crusade sermonwas one of the mostconspicuous, provided apowerful medium forconveying public messages.However, to achieve anyeffect, the significance ofsuch rituals needed to beunderstoodbeforehand,eitherbylonguse,aswiththeLatinMass, prior publicity, or

rehearsal. The crusadepreacher expected to preach,ifnottotheconverted,thentothe prepared whose interestneeded confirmation througha series of formulaicresponses,mostobviouslythetaking of the cross. Alongwith their supply of clothcrosses to be given to thecrucesignati, crusadepreachers armed themselveswith rolls of parchment on

which to write the names ofthe recruits. Without goodpreparation, the wholeprocedure could fall flat; in1267,whenLouisIXtookthecross for the second time,apparently many refused tofollow his example becausethey had not been warnedwhatwasafoot.Evidence for crusade

sermons before the latetwelfth century remains

dependent on chronicleaccounts. From these itappears such sermons wereneither regular norwidespread before the ThirdCrusade.With the rise in theuseofcrusadingasamilitaryweapon and its integrationinto thewiderdevotional lifeof the Christian west, thefrequency of crusadepreaching increased and itsorganization by the papacy

became more systematic.Innocent III used Cisterciansfor theFourthCrusade andacorps of Paris-trainedreformers such as James ofVitryfortheAlbigensianandFifth Crusades. From the1230s his successorsemployed the Friars as themain crusade proselytizers.Paradoxically, after InnocentIll’s bullQuia Maior (1213)for the Fifth Crusade, the

frequency of sermonsoperatedininverseproportiontotheirroleinrecruitmentasthe offer of the uniquelyredemptive plenary crusadeindulgence was extended tonon-combatants. Crusadepreaching increasingly actedas part of more generalevangelizing. Still promotingaparticularspiritualendeavorandcommitment,thefunctionof sermons broadened to

includefundraisingaswellasrecruitment.Crusade sermons followed

patterns of form andpresentation to ensure theoutcome peculiar to thisparticular ritual, the physicalcommitment of taking thecross. As at modernevangelical and revivalistmeetings, the congregationcould not remain passive.Theyhadto“comeondown”

and, therefore, needed to beprimed by example andexpectation. All rituals needcareful stage-management ifthey are to convey meaningand avoid absurdity and thedisbelief of the audience—crusade sermons, with theirlayers of intent and lack ofregularity, more than most.At Clermont, Urban II wascarefultoensurethat,oncehehad finished speaking,

Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy,immediatelycameforward toshow the rest of thecongregationhow to take thecross,while a cardinal in theback row set up the chant of“Godwillsit!”asameansofinspiring a sense of groupinvolvement. NeitherClermontnoranyoftheotherassemblies thatwitnessed thegreatariasofcrusaderhetoricover the next five centuries

gathered by chance, but bycarefularrangement.In1146,no accident had broughttogether the nobility ofFrance to hear Bernard ofClairvauxatVézelay;hehadbroughtwithhim“aparcelofcrosses which had beenprepared beforehand.” LouisVII, sitting on the platformbeside Bernard, had voicedhis interest in theHolyLandcampaignmonthsbefore,and

was already wearing a crosssenthimbythepope,leavingnodoubtastothepurposeofthe occasion. Bernard’s taskwas to publicize the papalbull, explaining the need forwar and the spiritual andtemporal privileges, and toconfirmrecruits.Hissermonsin 1146—47 merelyhighlighted the issues andsecured previously agreedresponses. This became the

usual form. WhenArchbishop Baldwin touredWales in Lent 1188, hisaudiences knew in advanceexactly when and where tomeethimandwhat todo.AtBasel in 1201, the crowdsflockingtohearAbbotMartinof Pairis’s formulaic, ifapparently moving, addresshad been “stimulated byrumors”ofcrusadepreachingandarrived“preparedintheir

hearts to enlist in Christ’scamp…hungrily anticipatingan exhortation of this sort.”Yettheauthorofthisaccountwentouthisway,despitehisown testimony, to portrayMartin’s sermon asautonomouslyinspirational.

RaymondofPoitiers,Prince of

Antioch,welcomesLouisVII of

France in this fourteenth-century

image. Before embarking on the

journey,Louishadtakenpartina

staged crusade sermon by

BernardofClairvaux,todrumup

supportforholywar.

A whole gallery ofmanipulative techniques wasemployed to support therhetoric.Propsincludedrelicsof theTrueCross,crucifixes,and visual aids. A Muslim

contemporary described howpreachers of the ThirdCrusade in 1188 traveledaroundwithalargeillustratedcanvas. On it, a Muslimcavalryman was depictedtrampling the HolySepulchre,onwhichhishorsehad urinated. While, by thethirteenth century,congregations had grownfamiliar with special prayersand processions dedicated to

the Holy Land as well asceremonies for taking thecross, there were still noliturgical formularies forresponses to sermons. In thisritual of penance andcommitment, thecongregation neededdirection. One aid wasprovided by the seasons ofthe church calendar, crusadesermonsoftenbeingdeliveredduringthepenitentialseasons

of Lent or Advent, or at thegreat Christocentric festivalsof Easter and Christmas, oronSeptember14,HolyCrossDay. Another came from atelling liturgical setting,frequently the Mass with itsconcentration on thephysicality of the Body andBlood of Christ. Audienceswere softened up andinvolvedbytheuseofchantsandslogans—footballcrowds

meet Billy Graham inreligious circus. WhenCardinal Henry of Albanopreached in Germany in1188, the clergy and laitysang hymns about Jerusalemto get everyone into themood. Once signed up,crucesignati sang songs orchantstoencouragecorporateidentity, or recited togetherthe General Confession fromthe Mass to underline the

penitential nature of theirundertaking. Gettingaudiences to that point wasnot left to chance or oratoryalone. James of Vitryobserved that to encourageothers it helped to have amemberoftheaudiencecomeforward promptly to take thecross at the end of thesermon,tobreaktheice,and,like Adhemar of Le Puy atClermont, show how it was

done. At Radnor in March1188, Gerald of Wales,having been told byArchbishop Baldwin, theChief Justiciar of England,andKingHenryIIhimself toset therequisiteexample(theprimatenotbeingtheworld’smostinspirationalevangelist),stood up first to take thecross: “In doing so I gavestrong encouragement to theothersandanaddedincentive

to what they had just beentold.”According to admiringwritten accounts, crusadepreaching campaigns wereaccompanied by sightings ofmiracles, sometimes assimple as clouds shaped inthe beholders’ eye as crossesor other celestial portents,natural accompaniment tosuchovertreligiousexercises.The whole operation restedon calculation, planning, and

showmanship.The content of sermons

functioned within this highlyartificial, ritualized staging.Oftenusingtherelevantpapalbull,preachersrehearsedpastevents and explained thejustification for war both onthegroundsofatrocitiestobeavengedandofmoralduty.Acommonliteraryandpossiblygenuine experiencedescribedhow the emotions not the

actual words preached wereunderstood, the messagereaching theuncomprehending audienceby divine rather than oral orauralmediation.Thepreacherand his words, especially ifdelivered in Latin to largecrowds, were distant,inaudible,orunintelligible asmeans of directcommunication, rather likeWilliam Gladstone at his

mass meetings in the latenineteenth century. Theoccasionwasas importantasanywords.Medievalsermonsprovided witnesses to divinemystery,settingsforspiritual,political, or social dialogue.In the thirteenth century, tosignal this religiousceremonial function, thoseattending sermons wereoffered indulgences of theirownwhetherornottheytook

the cross. Such sermonsritualized enthusiasm ratherthan rousing rabbles.Repeated references tointerpreters, the survival ofmorally edifying vernacularanecdotes (exempla), and theadvice contained inincreasingly popularthirteenth-century preachingmanualssuggestthatattemptsweremadetocommunicateinaudiences’ own languages as

well as Latin. While thesermons that have beenpreserved tend toward theelaborate and the academic,some preaching veteransemphasized the need forsimplicity; others indicatedthe importance of oratoricaltricks, including repetition ofalmostmantra-likephrasesorthe inclusion of arrestingmoral stories variously toillustrate duty, adventure, or

salvation.In combining symbolic

spiritual commitment withpublic church evangelism,crusade sermons representedmuch of the new reformistidealism associated with thepontificate of Innocent III.Preachers began to think oftaking the cross as a formofconversion, a completeamendment of spiritual lifesimilar, if less permanent, to

becoming a monk. Thecrusade sermon’s mixture ofdirect appeal to the laity,penance,confession,anddutytoChrist touchedmostof thekey elements of thereformers’ program. Yetthese ceremonies also servedas key moments in politicalprocesses such as thepacification of kingdoms.Monarchscould find in themoccasions to confirm their

status and elicit opendemonstrations of supportfrom their nobles, as didLouis VII of France atVézelay,Easter1146;ConradIII of Germany at Speyer,Christmas 1146; andFrederickIofGermanyattheso-called“CourtofChrist”atMainz, where he took thecross inMarch 1188. At theconference between Philip IIof France and Henry II of

England atGisors in January1188, the need to unite torecover theHoly Land easedthe reconciliation ofsuspicious rivals. Diplomaticcompromise could both besealed and disguised underthe banner of the cross.However, whether as anexpression of evangelism ordiplomacy,orsimplyameansof raising men and money,thecrusadesermon,forallits

prominence, performed aseries of roles largelysubsidiary to the widerorganization of crusading.Recruitment followedpatterns established beyondthe preachers’ congregations;locally,ceremoniesfortakingthe cross existedindependently. Nonetheless,sermons orchestrated ameasure of discipline, ofpeople, responses, and ideas,

increasingly attractive to aChurch ever more intent onuniformity of belief anddevotionalpractice.

RecruitmentandFinanceCrusading armies, like anyother, were assembledthrough amixture of loyalty,incentive, and cash, andmaintained and run throughties of lordship, clientage,sworn association, or, for

defaulters, legal coercion. Inthe absence of kings as clearoverlords,forexampleontheFirst and Fourth Crusades,these mechanisms provedvital in producing coherenceand order. Recruitmentrevolved around thehouseholds and affinities ofprinces, lords, knights, andurban elites. The misnamedPeasants’ Crusade of Peterthe Hermit in 1096 differed

fromothermajor expeditionsonly in thesocialstandingofits leaders and the ratio ofknights to infantry and,perhaps,non-combatants.Inasociety in which in manyregions the bulk of thepopulation were bound tolandlords by servile tenure,only freemen couldlegitimately take the cross;serfs who did so were ipsofacto manumitted. On

campaign, if no previousbond of allegiance existed,crusaders made their own.Peter theHermit’sexpeditionin1096possessedacommontreasury. By the time theChristian host reachedAntioch in 1097-98, a jointcommand had been formedbytheleadersofthedifferentcontingents with a commonfund that channeled moneythroughaswornconfraternity

toward essential constructionwork for the siege. Loyaltiescouldbebought, knights andlords transferring allegiancewhen theyor theirown lordsdied, deserted, or went bust.Evenwiththeinvolvementofkings, as in the Second andThird Crusades, individuallords remained responsiblefor their own followers,whether subsidized bymonarchsornot.

When lordship threatenedto collapse or no clear orderof precedence existed,crusaders, like theircontemporaries in townsacross Europe, resorted tosworn associations known ascommunes.Theseestablishedprocedures for makingdecisions, settling disputes,dividingspoils,andimposingdiscipline. This decidedlynon-feudal system of self-

governmentbecameacrusadecommonplace, from thedisparateNorthSeafleet thatassembled at Dartmouth inMay 1147 and later helpedcapture Lisbon, to individualships’ companies fromnorthern European cities inthe Third Crusade, to theleadership of the FourthCrusade. One of the failuresof the Fifth Crusade atDamiettalayinitsinabilityto

establish either an agreedleader or a sworn commune.Such associations alsooperated, at least in somecornersofFrance in1147, atthe level of local seigneurialbands coming together toembark on the Lord’sbusiness. Sometimes thesearrangements failed. TherulesswornbyLouisVIIandhis captains before leavingFrancein1147ontheSecond

Crusade were ignored.Months later, to save theFrench army fromannihilation in Asia Minor,another sworn communewasformed, this time to acceptthe leadership and disciplineof the Templars. Communalleadership did not precludethemilitaryrequirementforaclearcommandstructure.Theelection of Simon deMontfort as commander of

the Albigensian Crusade in1209 saved it fromdegenerating into a briefforayoframpageandpillage.

Peter theHermit is shown in a

sculpture at the cathedral of

Amiens, France. His crusade of

1096 has been misnamed the

Peasants’Crusade.

Theimportanceofaccesstofinance cannot beoverestimated. Thecommonest reason given bybacksliders in Englandaround 1200 for non-fulfillment of the vow was

poverty.Itisnoaccidentthatrules for borrowing moneyfigure prominently in theearliest crusade bull,Quantum praedecessores(1145/6) and its mostimportant successors, AuditaTremendi (1187) and QuiaMaior (1213). Much of theevidence for the identity andcircumstances of individualcrusaders derives from theirland deals to raise cash from

their landed estates andproperty, usually from theChurch.Thecostofcrusadingrepresented many times alandowner’s annual income.The need for moneydetermined the agreement ofthe First Crusade leadershipin1097toswearfealtytotheByzantine emperor. Itprovided the impetus for thediversion of the FourthCrusade to Zara (1202) and

Constantinople (1203-04).Money allowed Richard I todominatethePalestinewarof1191-92 on the ThirdCrusade, and CardinalPelagius, through his controlof the funds raised bytaxation of the church in thewest,toinfluencedecisionsatDamietta during the FifthCrusade in 1219-21.Although foraging allowedland armies to subsist,

chroniclers repeatedlyexclaimedat the iniquitiesoflocal markets and exorbitantprices from the Balkans toSyria. For sea transport, thecapital outlay could be huge.During the Third Crusade,Philip II’s promise to theGenoese of 5,850 silvermarkstoshiphisarmytotheHoly Land in 1190 appearsextremely modest comparedwith Richard Is expenditure

—in advance—of 14,000pounds (c.21,000 marks) onhis large fleet alone. SmallwonderRichard felt theneedto extort 40,000 gold ouncesfromTancredofSicilyin thewinter of 1190-91. TheFourth Crusade leadership’smassive commitment of85,000 marks to Veniceconstituted almost literally aking’s ransom (Richard Iscame to 100,000 marks in

1194)butpaledbeforeLouisIX’sestimatedexpenditureonhisfirstcrusadeof1.5millionlivres tournois, six times hisannualincome.

This manuscript illustration

depicts the siege of Acre by

RichardIofEnglandandPhilipII

of France. This costly Third

Crusade required wide-ranging

fundraising, sometimes

considered extortion, by Philip

andRichard.

Talk of money throws upthetwooldchestnutsofprofitand younger sons. Crusadingwas very expensive.Without

royal or ecclesiasticalsubsidies, money had to beraised through selling ormortgagingproperty,oftenathigh hidden rates of interest.One cliché of medievalhistory insists that peoplesought to increase theirproperty at any opportunity,except, it seems, crusaderswho condemned theirfamiliesat thevery least toashort-term and possibly

permanent loss. Given thatmostcrusadersdesired, ifnotexpected, to return, havinglittle interest in permanentemigration, it is hard toidentifywherecrudematerialprofit in the modern sensefeatured in their motives,contenting themselves withthe seemingly no less realrewards of relics, salvation,andsocialstatus.This distinction between

crusaders and settlersoperates even more sharplywhen considering the ideathat crusading appealedespeciallytoyoungersonsonthe make, forced out of thewest by the spread ofpatrilinear inheritance rulesthat left only the eldestholding the inheritance.While it is feasible thatsettlers, in Syria but perhapsespecially in the Baltic

regions, were encouraged tomigrate by lack of prospectsat home, this cannot beshown for crusaders. Theneed for finance meant thatarmiesweremannedbythosein possession or expectationof patrimonies or those, suchas the large number ofartisans recorded in crusadeforces, who had marketableskills.The foot soldierswerelegally but not necessarily

economically free. Thesources show that crusadingran in propertied familieswithout distinction ofinheritance claims, eldestsons, great lords as well asyounger siblings anddependent relatives.Emigration, at least amongaristocrats, may show atendency to favor thoselacking great expectations athome, but this must remain

no more than a plausibleguess given the inadequatestatistical base available ofknown individual immigrantstoSyria,Iberia,ortheBaltic.The idea that westerninheritancecustoms,eitherbyexcessivepartibilityofestatesor the exclusion of youngersons,explainthetwelfth-andthirteenth-century diasporafrom the central regions ofearly medieval Europe—

Italy, France, Germany,England—to the Celtic,Slavic, Finno-Ugrian, Greek,orArabicperipheriesmaybeattractive as a mechanisticmodel of causation. Butevidence suggests it cannotexplain the particularphenomenon of crusadingwhere thecrusaderswerenotsettlers by intent or evenaccident. The assumptionprevalent until recently that

most of the immigration intoFrankish Outremer camefrom the crusade armies nolongerlookseithercredibleoraccurate; it was neveradvanced for settlement inIberia or the Baltic whencivilian settlement followedmilitary conquest. Althoughthey individually existed, asgeneral defining types, themercenary crusader and theyounger son must ride into

the sunset of serioushistoricaldebatetogether.In any case, changes in

crusade funding in thethirteenth centurytransformed the whole basisof participation andorganization. Increasinglyconfigured as an obligationonallChristendom,intheorythe business of the crosscould demand contributionsfrom all the faithful.

However, this principle onlytranslatedintorealitywiththedevelopment of secular andecclesiasticalpoliticalcontroland fiscal exploitation.Taxation for crusading wasintroduced only fitfully. Topay for Duke Robert ofNormandy’scrusadein1096,his brother King William IIRufus of England levied aheavy land tax inEngland topaythetenthousandmarksto

mortgage theduchy for threeyears. In 1146—47, LouisVII of France raised moneyfrom the church and perhapsfrom towns in the royaldemesne. In response todiplomatic pressure, in 1166and 1185 the kings ofEngland and France imposedgeneral but modest taxes (ofbetween1and0.4percent)onrevenues, property, andmovables (that is, profits).

Thedefeat atHattin and lossof Jerusalem in 1187prompted the radicalinnovation of the Saladintithe of 1188 inEngland andFrance, a tenth on movablespayable by non-crucesignati.Once again left to secularrulers to collect, Henry II,alwayskeentotrynewformsof financial exaction, metwith some success, whileopposition forcedPhilip II to

cancel collection in 1189. InGermany, where no traditionof direct royal taxationsurvived, no such levy wasinstituted. Although it isunclear how much moneyHenry II raised from theSaladin tithe, still less howmuch was actually spent onthe crusade, the form of thetax provided a model forconsensualandparliamentarygrants in the following

century. However, taxationoperated by secular powerswassubjecttothevagariesofsecular politics and custom.In France, the obligation topay for a lord’s crusadejoined the three traditionalfeudal aids of ransom,knighting of the eldest son,and marriage of the eldestdaughter. In England,government crusade taxationonly surfaced when the holy

businessbecamecentralroyalpolicies, as in the yearsleadingtotheLordEdward’scrusade of 1271-72, whichelicitedaparliamentarygrantin 1270. In France in the1240s, Louis IX similarlychanneled large sums fromroyal revenues toward thecrusade.

Henry II of England (d. 1189)

raised funds for the crusades

throughtheimplementationofthe

“Saladintithe”in1188.

However,Louis IXdidnothave to rely on his ownresources; two-thirds of hisestimated expenses camefrom a grant of churchtaxation. The raising ofmoney directly fromecclesiastical revenuesby the

churchauthorities themselvesrevolutionized crusadefunding. First instituted,unsuccessfully, by InnocentIII in 1199, after the decreeAdLiberandamof theFourthLateran Council in 1215approving a grant of one-twentieth of church incomefor three years for the FifthCrusade,allsubsequentmajorcrusade enterprises soughtsimilar ecclesiastical taxes,

often to the dismay of localchurch leaders. Suchinstitutionalized fiscalincorporation of the churchinto crusading operationsmatchedthenewlyarticulatedideology of universalinvolvement of Christendomin the Lord’s War. Besideecclesiastical taxation,mechanisms were developedbetween 1187 and 1215 thatallowed pious laymen to

donate funds for the crusadeon amore or less permanentbasis through charitablegiving (gifts and alms),legacies,and,from1213,vowredemptions. Far fromsignaling mercenaryexploitation of a corruptideal,assomehistorianshaveargued, the offer of cashredemption of crusade vowsin return for crusadeindulgences mirrored the

Church’s attempts toevangelizethelaitythroughawider range of penitentialexercises, on a par with theadoptionofcompulsoryauralconfession in 1215. Chestsdesignated for crusadedonations appeared in parishchurches across Christendomand preachers increasinglysought to promote cash vowredemptions, a move thataroused healthy cynicism

among some observers whenthe task became the preserveof the supposedly mendicantFriars. By the fourteenthcentury, crusade indulgenceswere beginning to be soldoutright, without the need totake the cross. Such moveswidened the social embraceof crusading and itsindulgencetoincludetheold,the infirm, the less well-to-do, and women. The funds

from taxation, donations,legacies, and redemptionswere gathered by localcollectors and administeredby the Church, creating aseries of cash depositseagerly sought by aspiringcrusaders. Much of thepracticalbusinessofthecrossafter 1215 revolved aroundthemanagementanddisposalof these ecclesiasticallygenerated or held funds that

directly affected howcrusades to the east inparticularwererecruited.Sea transport and

independent Church fundingpromptedamoreprofessionalapproach in assemblingarmies,withwrittencontractsand cash retainers playing amore evident role. Thus, in1221, Cardinal Ugolino ofOstia, later PopeGregory IX(1227-41), toured northern

Italy signing onto theChurch’s payroll crusaderecruitswhohadnottakenthecross. Contracts betweencrusadersspecifyingpaymentfor a set number of soldierssurvive from the 1240s.RichardofCornwallhopedtopay for much of his crusadein 1240—41 from theproceedsofvowredemptions.EdwardofEngland’scrusadeof 1271—72, paid for from

layandclericalsubsidies,hasbeen described as “perhapsthe first English militaryforce to be systematicallyorganized by the use ofwritten contracts, withstandard terms available forservice.” The cohesioncentralfundingcouldprovidecan be illustrated by thecontrastingfatesoftwoofthebest-equipped expeditions tothe east, Frederick of

Germany’sof1189andLouisIX’s of 1249. Frederick’sfollowers had to pay forthemselves; afterhedrownedin 1190 the forcedisintegrated. Louis IX spentmuch time both beforeleaving France in 1248 andthroughout the campaign of1249—50 trying to enticenobles who were not hisvassals, like the chroniclerJohn of Joinville, into his

paid service. Even after thedebacle in the Nile Delta in1250, Louis’s resources heldhis shattered army together.Ironically, more efficientexploitation of resourcesreflected increased centralcontrol inmanykingdomsofthe west, which ultimatelyimpeded the crusade byelevatingnationalordynasticself-interest aboveinternational stability. It also

altered perceptions of howcrusading should best beconducted. The earlyfourteenth-century VenetianMarino Sanudo, in advicenever actually implemented,arguedthatanyinitialattacksof Mamluk Egypt should beundertaken by forces paidfromcentralchurchfundsandmannedbyprofessionals,andexplicitlynotbycrucesignati.This, he felt,would ensure a

more efficient militaryoutcome.An alternative institutional

method of funding andrecruitment reached itsapogee and nadir in thecentury after 1215. TheMilitary Orders had longofferedasourceofpermanentmanpower, with a constantpool of money from theirestates in thewest. From the1130s, the Orders had

received lavish donations oflandandpropertyfrompiousdonors, the profits of whichsubsidized their activities intheHolyLandandelsewhere.Increasingly, they took overthedefenseoftheLatinstatesof Outremer and acted asbankersforvisitingcrusaders.In Spain, strategic frontierdefenses were entrusted tolocal as well as internationalorders.IntheBaltic,Military

Ordersofferedthesolutiontothe sporadic, transient, andunderfunded lay crusading,with the Teutonic Knightscreating their own states inPrussia and Livonia.However, the evacuation oftheHolyLandin1291ledtoa widespread soul-searchingabouttheOrders’roleanduseof their extensive wealth.This debate contributeddirectly to the persecution

and suppression of theTemplars between 1307 and1314 on trumped-up chargesof heresy, corruption, andsodomy, as well as to therelocationoftheheadquartersof the Teutonic Knights atMarienburg in 1309 and theHospitallers’ conquest ofRhodes the same year. Yetmany still regarded acombination of generalchurch subsidy with the

model of a Military Order,with its channels of fundingand structures of command,commitment, and discipline,as potentially the mosteffectivewayoforganizinganew eastern crusade.However,theverytechniquesthat made such theoriespossible militated againsttheir fulfillment. Churchtaxes or the lands ofdiscredited Military Orders

were far too lucrative fornationalgovernmentstoleavefor the business of the crossthathadinspiredthem.

Malbork castle (in Malbork,

Poland, formerly Marienburg,

Prussia) was the headquarters of

the Teutonic Knights after they

lefttheHolyLand.

TheCrusadeandChristianSocietyCrusading was a function ofwestern European society.Assessment of its impactmust distinguish between thedistinctiveandthecontingent.

Thewarsofthecrossdidnotcreate theexpansionofLatinChristendom or theinternationalization of saints’cults. Nor did they createChristianity’s embrace ofholy war, a moresophisticated penitentialsystem, the birth ofpurgatory, the militancy ofthe papal monarchy, the risein anti-Semitism, or theexclusion or persecution of

minorities and Christiandissidents. Unlike thecampaigns in the easternMediterranean, the conquestsand colonization in Spain ortheBalticand thepapalwarsagainst its enemies did notowe their inception tocrusading formulae. Mostpeopledidnotgooncrusade.Only occasionally couldcrusading enterprises beregarded as “popular” in the

sense of being initiatedprimarily by groups belowthe rural and urban elites,such as the Children’sCrusade of 1212 and theShepherds’Crusadesof1251and 1320. The wider socialinvolvement came fromlarge-scalerecruitmentbythenobility in limited areas forspecific campaigns and,increasingly, throughtaxation, the legal

implications of the taking ofthecrossandtheextensionofaccess to the indulgence viacontributions and vowredemptions after 1200. Theconcept of “CrusadingEurope” misleads.Nevertheless, these warsadded a particular quality tosociety in their rhetoricaldefinition of a pathology ofrespectable violence, theunique attraction of the

associatedprivileges, and thedisruption to public andprivatelife.Thepeculiarfashioningofa

vocabulary and practice ofpenitential violence thatdeveloped in the century andahalfafter1095providedtheChurch with a powerfulweapon to aim at itsopponents and a means tocement its importance in thepolitics of its allies and the

lives of the faithful. As anactivity that justified thesocial mores of the rulingmilitary elites of the west,crusadingbecamethecontextfor a wide range ofunconnected social andpolitical rituals. Landownersdatedtheirchartersfromtheircrusading deeds. Diplomaticalliances were agreed underthe cloak of aiding the HolyLand.Taking the cross acted

as a symbol of reconciliationbetween parties in dispute ora demonstration of loyaltyand allegiance in which nosidelostface.Politiciansatalow ebb sought help in thelanguage of the cross; KingJohn of England took thecross in 1215 shortly beforebeing forced to agree to theMagna Carta. By the mid-thirteenth century,commitment to the business

of the cross had become arequisite in diplomaticexchanges, rulers, such asHenry III of England, wholeft their vows unfulfilledcutting morally ambiguousfigures. Those refusing to goon crusade were popularlyknownas“ashy,”tiedtotheirhome fires. The familiarliterary stereotype of thedescroisié, content to enjoyhiscrusadeprivilegesthrough

vow redemptions, frightenedof the sea, and anxious toprotect his position at home,indicated how far crusadinginstitutions had penetratedbeyondtherecruitinghall.

King John of England was

forcedtosigntheMagnaCartaof

1215. Itwas insuchmomentsof

weakness that he, and other

European monarchs, looked for

legitimacybytakingupthecross.

The social and economicdisruptionofactivecrusadingvaried. The expeditions eastofTheobaldofChampagneorRichardofCornwallin1239-41 did not compare with the

great efforts of 1146-48,1189-92, or 1248-50, whilecrusades in Spain and theBaltic added only marginalluster and perhaps somerecruits to the habitualcampaigning of the Iberian,Danish, or German princes.Yet even small-scaleenterprises could influencelocal land markets andregional balances of wealthand power as crusaders

mortgaged or sold theirproperty. For families, thecost of crusading and theabsence of property ownersforverylongperiodscouldbehighly damaging, leading todisparagement of estates andwidows, or worse, somewives being murdered byimpatient claimants to thecrusaders’ lands. Casualtyrates, especially on the land-based expeditions, could be

extreme; perhaps over 80percent of those who set outin 1096-97 did not survive.Enhanced social standing forreturningcrusadersmayhavebeen little compensation.Moregenerally,theliberationof church-held bullion tosubsidizecrusadersmayhaveencouraged the circulation ofwealth and thus stimulatedlocal economies. Regionally,prices of war commodities,

such as horse shoes, arrows,sides of bacon, and cheesecould rise, as they did inEngland in the early 1190s.Suppliers of transport, frommules and carts to the greattransmarine fleets, benefited.However,afairproportionofthe wealth collected in thewest was dissipatedunproductively on warmaterials and campaignexpenses far from home.

Crusade taxation, like anyother in the Middle Ages,tended to be regressive,fallingonthoseatthebaseofthe economy. That helped toensure the popularity amongaristocratic crusaders of thenew financing arrangementsinthethirteenthcentury.Vowredemptions cost less thanactive crusading but acted asa hidden tax on the faithful.Yet, without crusading, it

cannot be clear that thiswealth would have beenredirected tomore ostensiblyproductive ends or evencirculatedatall. InternationaltradebetweentheeasternandwesternMediterraneanpiggy-backed on the Crusades andvice versa; they weremanifestations of a single, ifdiverse, process ofcommercial expansion ofmarkets and trade routes.An

overall financial balancesheet is impossible todetermine, but the Crusades,howeverwastefuloflivesandeffort, of themselves neithersignificantly ruined norenriched the economy ofwesternEurope.Thelegalprivilegesgranted

crusaders reached as far asfinance into the intersticesofsocial life.Church protectionand immunity from interest,

debts, and law suits wereenforcedbysecularaswellasecclesiastical courts from thePapal Curia downwards.Away from the high-profilecases of infringement of therules, as when Richard I’slands were threatened in hisabsence, the operation of theprivileges and churchprotection was conducted inlocal courts acrossChristendom, whose

decisions defined anddeterminedmuchoftheeffectof the crusade on the homefront, from whether or not acrusadercouldparticipateinatrial by battle in Normandy,to illegal wine-sellersavoiding fines inWorcestershirebycitingtheircrusader status, to whethercrucesignati could literallyget away with murder. Thecivil attractions of the

crusader privileges madeabuse inevitable, a problemrecognized by the decree AdLiberandam (1215). Therewere regular complaints thatcrusaders were using theirstatus as license to committheft, murder, and rape;criminals or those facingawkward litigation regularlycited crusade privileges todelay or avoid the day ofreckoning.Thisdidnotmean

the system was corrupt,merely open to corruption.Referencestotheoperationofcrusading immunities in therecords of secular courtsallowaglimpseof theextentof theCrusades’ reach. Theyalso point to a high level ofcooperationbetweencivilandecclesiastical jurisdictions,not least because there wereso few detailed rules, thepractical implications and

extent of privileges beingworked out over manygenerations on a national,regional, local, or evenindividualbasis.With the institutionofvow

redemptions and spiritualrewards for contributing aswell as participating incrusading, and theparaphernalia of alms-giving,special prayers, liturgies,processions, and bell-ringing

thatdevelopedafter1187,thespiritual privileges enteredthehabitualdevotionallifeofthe west. Church reformerssaw in the dissemination ofitsindulgencetheopportunitytousethecrusadeasamodelas well as a metaphor forspiritual and penitentialamendment of life. Takingthe cross became depicted aspartofaregenerativecycleofconfession, penance, good

works,andredemption,asortof conversion, its votariesdescribed by James of Vitryasareligio,areligiousorder.Some argued that taking thecross could end demonicpossession, secure time offpurgatory for relatives, evendeadones, cure the sick, andconsole the dying. SermonsdeCruce,on theCross,wereused almost interchangeablyfor preaching the crusade or

moral reform. For devoutthirteenth-century puritanssuchasLouisIXorSimondeMontfort, thecrusadeformedpart of their private religiouslife as well as their publiccareer. Thus as a religioushabit as much as a martialendeavor, crusading survivedits defeats on the battlefieldsofthelaterMiddleAges.

Simon de Montfort’s military

campaigns to exterminate the

Cathars won him royal favor.

This1216vellumdocumentisde

Montfort’shomagetoKingPhilip

II of France for the gift of

territories confiscated from

RaymondVI,CountofToulouse,

who had sympathized with and

defendedtheheretics.

This does not implyuniversal or consistent

commitment. The myriadsermons and devotionalworks reminding the faithfulof some basic tenets ofChristianity, among otherevidence, suggest that theMiddleAgeswerenomoreorless a period of faith orskepticism than the twenty-first century. Contemporarieswere as keen to delineatecontrasting crusade motivesas modern historians. Much

of the typology was equallycrude.After the fiascoof theSecond Crusade, one bitterobserver in Würzburgaccused thecrusadersof lackof sincere love ofGod;most“lusted after novelties andwent in order to learn aboutnew lands” or out of amercenary desire to escapepoverty, debts, harshlandlords, or justice. Suchbrickbats are the price of

failure and the small changeof moral rearmers. The ideathatcrusaderstotheeastweredriven by greed isconsiderably less convincingthan that they were fired byanger and intolerance. Anti-Jewish attacks had beenknown in northern Europebefore 1096, most notablyafter 1009, but the repeatedferocity of attacks bycrusaders indicates that the

wars of the cross lentspurious justification to suchcommunalbarbarism.Yettheattacks on the Jews signal apiety of sorts, howeverunderpinned by ignorance,larceny, and criminality. Tosuggest mixed motives formany crusaders does notconvict them of hypocrisy,merelycomplexity.It has become fashionable

to ascribe purely mercenary

inspiration to the citizens ofthe Italianmaritime cities, ina peculiar modernhistoriographicalcombinationofretrospectivesnobberyanda belief that commerce is“modern” and so immunefrom “naive” or “medieval”religious sincerity. Materialadvantage and genuinereligious commitment havenever been mutuallyexclusive; nor were they

among crusaders. TheVenetian crusade of 1122—25,inasortofforeshadowingoftheFourthCrusade,raidedByzantine territory to forcearestoration of preferentialtraderules.Yetitalsofoughta hard sea battle against theEgyptiansandhelpedcapturethe port of Tyre, again inreturn for trading privilegesandproperty.OnreturntotheAdriatic further raiding

carried off booty and relics.Modern disapproval missesthe essence. The Italiantradingcities’contributionstocrusading of men, blood,treasure, and materials weresecond to none. Crusadingenthusiasmdidnotstopatthegates of commercial ports,nor did the desire for profitor, at least, an avoidance oflosscontradictthespiritualityas well as the material risks

inherent in taking the cross,anymore thandid aknight’sdesire to fight to earnsalvation and to survive.Whileelementsofduty, fear,devotion, repentance,excitement, adventure,material profit, and escapismfeature in the sources ascontributory spurs to action,oneoverwhelmingurge,withsecular and spiritualdimensions, may have been

what could inadequately bedescribed as status—withchurch, peers, neighbors,relatives, God. The mosttypical trophies of this statuswere relics which thereturning crusader bestowedon local churches, furtherenhancing both socialreputation and godly credit;thelureoftheuniquerichnessof treasure houses ofChristian relics at

Constantinople acted as aspur to its destruction in1204. The discredit affordedthose who failed to fulfilltheir vows, or those whodeserted or refused to enlist,alonereflectedthecontinuingsocial admiration that clungtoveteransofthecross.It is often argued that the

crusade declined as apolitical, religious,andsocialforce from themid-thirteenth

century. This has beenattributed to a growth in thewealth of western Europe,which is supposed to havebegun a process of“modernization” in whichcrusadingappearedoldhatasa cause inspired by God notMammon. The decadence ofcrusading has been attributedvariouslytothecorruptionofmoney in theprofessionalization of the

business of the cross and tothe rise of national self-interest over the demands ofChristendom in general. Thediversion of holy war tointernal enemies of thepapacy has been taken as abarometer of this decay.Many of these argumentsrefer to the Holy Landcrusadeandmake littlesenseapplied elsewhere. It isundeniable that papal

crusades in Italy aroused theanger of clerics who had topaytaxesforthemorpoliticalopponents; successive popestrod carefully to avoidincitingopposition.Preachingfor internal crusades tendedto be far more restrictedgeographically than that foreasternexpeditions,andtherepersistedanervoussensitivityto local feeling if internalcrusadesweretobepreached

in parallel or in competitionwith eastern campaigns. Yetmuch of the hostility to theanti-Hohenstaufen or Italiancrusadesinthethirteenthandfourteenth centuries, beyondtheovertlypartisan, revolvedaround anxieties lest theydiverted attention from theplightof theHolyLand.Thebusinessofthecrossretainedits popularity, even if itsadherents were more

discriminating than papalapologistshopedorimagined.The rise of stronger nationalregimes delivered a moredamaging blow. Byappropriating politicalenergy, material resources,and even holy warmentalities, the HundredYears’WarbetweenEnglandand France (1337—1453)sealed the loss of the HolyLand as decisively as the

military system of theMamlukEmpire.FightingforGod remained an ideal andpractice throughout the laterMiddleAges and beyond, itslegal implications absorbedinto secular aswell as canonlawcodes.Librarieswerefullof crusade histories andromances; veterans’ artifactsbecame cherished heirlooms;illuminated manuscripts,theatrical re-enactments,

paintings, tiles,and tapestriesin palaces, houses, and townhalls kept the images fresh.However quixotic it mayseem to blinkered moderneyes peering at the past fortheoriginsofourownworld,theChristianholywarwecallthe Crusades, partly becauseof its lack of rigid definitionand protean adaptability, hadseeped into the bedrock ofwestern public consciousness

through social and religiousas well as political andmilitarychannels,embodyingmany of the human qualitiesand inspiring martial actionsthatremainedhighlyregardedfor centuries after Outremerhad faded into a goldenmemory.

The Battle of Crécy (1346),

shown in this sixteenth-century

painting, was a decisive English

victory in the Hundred Years’

War—a conflict that redirected

themilitantenergyof theFrench

andEnglish.

The Dome of the

Rock shrine in

Jerusalem, pictured

hereatsunrise,wasa

long-sought-after

prize of Crusaders

and a symbol of

Islam in the Holy

Land.

SEVEN

HolyLands

CRUSADING SACRALIZED THE

LANDS it attacked orconquered. These were seenin terms of recovery of theheritageofChrist (Palestine),HisMother (Livonia), orHis

disciples, such as James(Spain)andPeter(anyregionplacedunderpapalprotectionor lordship). Less obviously,crusading also tended tosacralize the lands fromwhich the holy warriors hadbeen drawn. The numinousdistinction bestowed byparticipation in crusadingmergedwith concepts of justwarsfoughtforthepatria,thehomeland. These

consecrations provoked aseries of anomalies betweenimage and reality. Crusadefrontiers, in Spain, Syria,Prussia, or Livonia, were atonceideologicallyrigidwhilephysically, culturally, orpolitically porous. Promotersand chroniclers of conquestproclaimed sharp religiousand ethnic divisions wheneconomic contact and themechanics of lordship

required social exchangeleading to culturaltransmission. The universalhomeland of these NewIsraelites, Christendom(Christianitas), becamefragmented into distinctpatria, kingdoms or cities,appropriating to themselvestheconceptofa“HolyLand”where, for the political elite,involvement in the crusadestood as a touchstone of

identity, respect, andauthority.Crusading stoodasan objective of nationalpolicy and an analogy fornationalwar.Nolessthantheholy lands of crusaderconquest, these patria werebolstered by images derivedfrom the Israel of the OldTestament and egregiousapocalyptic politicalpropaganda and thought, inwhich any successful

crusaderkingcouldlayclaimto the prophecies of theLastEmperor at theEndofTime.The consequent habit ofequating national aggressionwith transcendent universalgood and vice versaconstitutes a lastinginheritance. “One nationunder God” has a complexancestry but it includes themedieval holy wars of thecross.

TheHolyLandOverseas:OutremerandColonialMythsShortly after the FirstCrusade, the northernFrenchwriter and abbot Guibert ofNogent coined the phrase“Holy Christendom’s newcolonies” for the Christianconquests in Syria andPalestine. The question ofwhether the Christiansettlements intheeastcanbedescribed as colonies in any

modern sense has exercisedhistoriansfortwocenturies.Ifa colony can be understoodas, in some fashion,deliberatelycreatedtoactasasubordinate in a largercommercial, economic, orstrategicsystemoperatedbyadistant colonial power in itsowninterests,thenOutremer,despite its name, hardly fitsthe model. If, however, acolonyimpliesaplantationof

an alien population of rulersand settlers who retain theircultural identity andassociationwith their regionsof origin, then Outremerdisplays colonialcharacteristics. However,Outremer formed part of nosecular or ecclesiasticalwestern empire except asprovinces of the LatinChurch. Unlike Prussia, thekingdom of Jerusalem,while

paying Peters Pence to thepapacy,was not a papal fief,and in the thirteenth centuryfiercely resisted attempts toincorporate it into theHohenstaufen empire.Despite intimate dynasticlinks with westernaristocracies, no trans-Mediterraneanlordshipswerecreated. Despite a constantflow of pilgrims and, in thetwelfth century, settlers in

both directions, contactsbetweenimmigrantsandtheircountries of origin quicklyfaded, Franks tending toadopt local places assurnames. No reigningFrankish monarch ofJerusalem ever visitedwesternEurope.Whiletheconstantneedfor

westernreinforcementandanincreasing reliance on theinternational networks of

Italian commercial cities andof the Military Orders neverpermitted relations betweenOutremerandthewesttolosetheir umbilical quality, thepolity of Outremer (twelfth-century Byzantine claims toAntioch excepted) remainedsocially and institutionallyautonomous. Westerners andeasterners increasingly tradedmocking insults about eachother. Outremer’s distinctive

characteristic of a garrisonsocietydidnotguardvitalsealanes, trade routes, markets,or sources of raw materialsbutwhatmany regardedas ahugereligiousrelic,“Christ’sheritage.” Direct materialprofit had not driven theconquest of Outremer,although this did not impedesubsequent economicexploitation. The most self-evidently colonial element in

Outremer were therepresentatives of the Italiancommercial cities whoestablished quarters in portssuch as Acre and Tyre tohouse a transient populationofmerchantsandsailorsfromtheir home ports. Most ofthese agents did not becomepermanentsettlersintheeast.While Outremer conformedto the medieval pattern offoreign settlements in

replicating home societiesrather than to the moderncolonial model of voluntaryor enforced dependency, itdidnotcompareinemulationwith the thirteenth-centuryFrankish establishment inGreece—“new France” asone pope called it—inemulating theoldcountry. Incontrast with Spain andPrussia, where land frontierswith Latin Christendom

ensured heavy potentialimmigration, orwith Prussia,Livonia, and Estonia, wherereligious conversion of theconqueredallowedameasureofacculturationofthenativeswith the intruders, there wasno melting pot shared byimmigrant and native intwelfth-century Outremer.Instead,Outremerpresentedamosaic of faith and ethniccommunities,piecesofsocial

tesserae wedged tightlytogether to form a singlepattern.Althoughcastinaholyland

and founded by crusaders,ChristianOutremerwasnota“crusader society.” Whilepermanent peace withMuslim neighbors was, forboth sides, conceptuallyimpossible, during much ofthe period of Frankishoccupation 1098 to 1291,

truces and alliancesnourished. Parts of thekingdom of Jerusalem in themid-twelfth century weremore peaceful thancontemporary England,France,or Italy.Mostcastlesand fortified houses lay farfromthefrontiersandplayedthesameadministrativeratherthan military role in theorganization of lordships astheir counterparts did in

England. The rulers andsettlers were neithertechnically nor actuallycrusaders. Unlike thirteenth-century Prussia or Livonia,Outremer was not ruled bycrusading Military Orders,howeversignificant their roleinitsdefenseandaggression.Although the rulers’ rhetoricspokedifferently,withpopes,politicians, and chroniclerspresenting a particular

frontier myth of heroicconquest and battle to justifythe Franks’ presence andexcite western support,Outremer society, whilesustained by this cohesiveideology of “exiles” for thefaith, reflected a far morehumdrum diversity ofexperience than such crudecaricaturesallow.

Followingbehindsoldiersofthe

Crusades, Italian merchants and

sailors settled in cities likeAcre,

today part of Israel. This 1843

lithograph showsboats inAcre’s

harbor; minarets rise above the

city.

The task of occupation fellfarbelowtheepicvision,stillless did it fit either of thealternative moderninterpretationsofOutremerasa conduit of inter-culturalexchange and cooperation oras a bleak, arid, and doomedsystem of apartheid.Demographic imperativesensured diversity inOutremer, as in its Muslim-ruled neighbors, but no deep

cultural synthesis. TheFranks’ clothes (such as thefashionable turban or theprudent loose garments andsurcoats), food, domesticarchitecture (even the ruggedHospitallers seem to haveinstalled bathrooms at theircastle of Belvoir), personalhygiene, and medicine wereadapted to the environment.Franks learnt Arabic, aprocess accelerated by

commerce, lordship, and theunfortunately frequent habitof their leaders gettingcaptured and spending longyears in Muslim custody. Insome ways, the Frankishruling elite resembled instatus and relationship to theindigenous population theTurkish atabegs who ruledelsewhereinSyria,foreignerssustainedbymilitarystrengthandtheextractionofrevenues

from an alien local laborforce.

TheCastlesofOutremer

In Outremer, religion notraceformedthetechnicaltestofcivilrightsandcitizenship.Intermarriage occurredbetween Franks and localChristians and convertedMuslims. The idea that theFranks faced an exclusivelyMuslim native populationseems far from the case; inparts of Outremer, Muslims

were not even a majority.Where necessary, Frankishrulers occasionally extendedpatronage toMuslim settlers,doctors,andmerchants,whileat the same time showing noqualms about using Muslimslave labor. A few sharedsites of religious worshipsurvived, such as in thesuburbsofAcreinthetwelfthcentury, the Church of theNativity in Bethlehem in the

thirteenth century, or theremarkable Greek Orthodoxshrine of Our Lady ofSaidnaya,northofDamascus.After the initial stage ofconquest, Muslim resistanceto Frankish rule, in theabsence of politicalleadership, which had fled,rarely reached beyond thelevel of localized banditry.The new rulers’ and settlers’enjoyment of resources did

not entail systematicpersecution of other faithcommunities. Overtaggression to non-Christiansseemed the preserve ofzealous, boorish newcomers.InmarketcourtsattheportofAcre,jurorsweredrawnfromboth Latin and SyrianChristiansandwitnesseswerepermitted to swear oaths ontheir holy books—Christianson the Gospels, Jews and

SamaritansontheTorah,andMuslims on the Koran—“because,” the Jerusalemlaw code insisted, “be theySyriansorGreeksor JewsorSamaritans or Nestorians orSaracens, they are also menlike the Franks.” TheHospitallers, who ran thegreat hospital in Jerusalemthat could accommodatehundredsofpatientsatatime,agreed. They treated anyone

regardlessofraceorreligion.Only lepers were excluded,forobviousreasons.This does not imply that

Christian Outremer operatedas a haven of tolerance.Medieval racism was largelycultural, revolving aroundexternal differences incustoms, law, and language,more than the distinctions ofblood inheritance preferredby some modern racists. In

that sense, discrimination onthe grounds of religion wasinherently racist. Thisextended to the de factoreligious discriminationagainst native Christiancommunities—Armenians,Greeks, and Arabic- orSyriac-speaking Melkites,Nestorians, Jacobites, andMaronites—not in terms ofcivil but ecclesiastical rights.The Franks Latinized the

Church in Outremer,occupyingallthetopjobsandmonopolizing much of theendowment and income.However, local Christians, atleast in chroniclers’descriptive language,charters, and the law courts,were not confused with theMuslim settled population,the Bedouin on the borders,or the Turci beyond thefrontiers. The Jewish

population of Palestinedeclined sharply after 1099,although the remainingcommunities avoided directpersecution,manyworkinginthe dyeing business. LocalChristians lived within theambitofFrankishsocietyandlaw, owning property,intermarrying, and in somerural areas actually sharingvillages with immigrants,who tended tobeattracted to

regions already occupied byco-religionists. Muslims andJews dwelt apart, except intownsandcities,wheretrade,agriculture, tax collecting, orrevenuegatheringbroughtthecommunities intocontact.Asa special distinction, allFrankswere, ipso facto, free.Political and social barriersprecluded multiculturalismjust as firmly as differencesof religion, race, and

ethnicity.Occasionally,moregeneral cultural hostilityerupted,asin1152inTripoliafter the assassination ofCountRaymondII,when“allthose who were found todiffer either in language ordress from the Latins’ weremassacred.Such racial ratherthan religious discriminationwas grounded on certainmundane but inescapabledifferences in language and

manners:Syriansshavedtheirpubic hair not their beards;Franks did the reverse orneither. Yet at the non-threatening margins ofcivility, transmission ofcustomscouldflourish.

Tripoli in the twelfth century

was the site of hostility and

violence resulting from cultural

andracialdifferences,ratherthan

simply religious contentiousness.

The city fell to the Mamluks in

1289, as depicted in this

thirteenth- or fourteenth-century

painting.

Although, unlike in Sicilyafter its eleventh-centuryconquest by the Normans,

there were few anti-Muslimriots, Outremer presented apicture of recognizeddiversity and enforcedinequality.In1120lawswerepromulgated forbiddingsexual congress betweenChristians and Muslims andimposing dressdiscrimination.TheJerusalemlaw code listed severepenaltiesforMuslimviolenceon Christians, but none vice

versa. Taxation fell moreheavily on the peasantry andmost severely on Muslims,whohadtopayapolltax(asChristians had underMuslimrule).InGalileeinthe1180s,local Muslims referred toKingBaldwinIVas“thepig”and his mother, Agnes ofCourtenay,as“thesow.”Onesettler, encountering blackAfricans for the first time,“despised them as if they

werenomorethanseaweed.”At either end of the twelfthcentury some Muslimcommunities aided invaders.In Antioch, treatment ofMuslims veered fromeconomic encouragement toextortion,promptingsporadicuprisings. Although inMuslim rural areas, andevenin cities such asTyre, publicIslamic worship waspermitted, Muslim shrines

and cemeteries fell intodisrepairandinthe1180soldmen recounted tall stories ofthe heroic defense of thecoastal cities against theinvading infidel. Muslimslaves, including women inshackles, were a commonsight. Without a Muslimsocial or intellectual elite,either in exile or deniedstatus, their popular culturesinevitablystagnated.

Always a minority,especially in the thirteenthcentury when effectivelypenned in to the narrowcoastal strip, the Frankishpeasantry and artisansadapted to local methods ofagriculturewhichwouldhavebeen familiar, if tougher, tosettlersfromsouthernFrance,Italy, and Spain. Perhaps themost distinctive featureimported by westerners were

pigs. The Franks lived invillages of their own, orbeside local Christians, butmixedwithallothergroupsintowns and cities. Theexperience of Nablus, northof Jerusalem, illustrated thetensionsandaccommodationsof inter-communal relations.A Frankish wineshop stoodopposite a Muslimguesthouse. A local Muslimwoman who had married a

Frankmurderedhimandtooktoa lifeofcrime,ambushingand killing passing Franks,while the Frankish wife of alocal draper became theexpensive mistress of thePatriarch of Jerusalem. Notallwasconflict.TheFrankishviscountinvitedanArabemirfrom northern Syria towitness a trial by battlebetween two Franks overallegations that one of them

had set Muslim thieves ontothe other’s property. Abullying local Frankishlandlord forced a communityof devout Muslims toemigrate to Damascus whileat the same time the localSamaritan sect was allowedto continue with its annualPassover ritual that attractedworshippers from across theNear East. Such practicalcoexistence punctuated by

extremes of faith orcriminality undermines neatgeneralizations about thecolonialexperience.At the top of society, the

Frankisharistocracycreatedaworld as much like the westas possible, in law,landholding, militaryorganization, religion, andlanguage. However, thesetting inevitably impinged.Slavery,dyingoutinwestern

Christendom,formedastapleofNearEasternsocietywhichthe Franks adopted.Proximity bred contact,especially where non-Franks,even non-Christians,possessedusefultalents.KingBaldwin I of Jerusalem(1100-1118) took a Muslimconvert as an intimateservant, probably lover,giving him his name as wellasreligion.Theroyalcourtof

Jerusalem in the twelfthcentury was almost ascosmopolitan as those ofNorman-Greco-Arabic Sicilyor theArab-Turkish-Kurdish-Armenian-Jewish courts ofthe Near East. King Amalric(1163-74), who campaignedin Egypt and visitedConstantinople, was marriedto a Greek, employed asfamily doctors and ridingmasters Syrian Christians

who had worked for theFatimids of Egypt and laterserved Saladin, and a tutor,WilliamofTyre (c.1130-86),steeped in the finest state ofthe art learning from ParisandBologna. Some Frankishknightsandnoblesseemedtohave forged amicablerelations with Muslimcounterparts across thefrontiers during times oftruce; a number regularly

sought service with Turkisharmies. Alliances betweenFranks and Muslim powerswere commonplace, even ifformer allies happilyslaughtered each other whenthe diplomatic and militarywheel turned. “Apartheid”seems an inappropriatelynarrow and monochromedescriptionofsuchasociety.Yet Outremer did own a

unique status that made

integration with native non-Christians impossible. Thewestern settlement onlyoccurred because of thereligious aspiration of theconquerors. Although themotivesofimmigrantsremainhidden, one element inpersuading non-noble settlersto try their luck in such arelatively inhospitable anddistant region was the desireto live in the land where

Christ and His saints hadlived. The pious rhetoric ofexile on one level matchedthe reality. With a largelyimmigrant higher clergy anda constant influx of lordsfrom the west, the sense ofmission kept on beingrenewed.The holiness of theHoly Land exerted animportant influence inOutremer society. Theconquestsof1098-99opened

Palestine to a flood ofpilgrims from Christendomwith expectations fuelled byBiblical and crusadingstories.Atanyonetime,therecould be seventy pilgrimships docked at Acre, somecapable of carrying hundredsof passengers. Traveling onone of the two annual“passages,”whenthecurrentsand winds in spring andautumn allowed for easier

journeys, these tourists foundeager hosts. The Jerusalemkings exacted tolls on them(just as their Muslimpredecessors had done). Thetwo great Military Orders ofthe Temple (1120) andHospital (1113, militarizedprobably by 1126) werefounded to protect and healthem.Thecateringtradegrewrich on them. Residents inOutremergavethemplacesto

visit,bysprucingupoldsites,excavatingothers,suchastherelics of the Patriarchs atHebron in 1119, andimaginatively recreating theBiblical landscape, “NewHoly Places newly built”according to John ofWürzburginthe1160s.Inre-mapping the sacredlandscape, the LatinChristians were following aprocess familiar from the

Roman emperors Titus andHadrian in the first andsecond centuries, the GreekChristians in the fourthcentury, the Muslims after638,1187,and1291,andtheZionists and Israelis in thetwentiethcentury.This habit of importing or

annexing a new sacredlandscape was common toconversion, colonization, andcrusading.Ason theSpanish

and Baltic frontiers, inOutremer it served toreinforceaparticularlystrongsense of exceptionalism, atleast among the articulate,and was of a piece with the“fractured colonialism,” as ithas been described, ofFrankish society. How farsettlersandrulersfeltthepullof divine immanence in theirmaterial surroundings canonly partly be reconstructed

from the opinions of theirinterpreters, such as Williamof Tyre, or from theirbehavior. Those modernhistorians such as JoshuaPrawerwhohaveaccusedtheFranks of cultural myopia inregard to other communitiesmiss thepoint.Bydefinition,theFrankishsettlementcouldnot overtly compromise withother ethnic models. Yetneither could—or did—they

ignore them. It has becomemodish to condemn thewestern settlements in theeastasabrutishintrusionintoa more civilized andsophisticated Islamic world.Yet the Turkish invasion ofthemid-eleventhcenturywasmoredisruptive.Thewarringpolitical and religiousfactions within the Islamicpolity—Arab, Turkish,Kurdish, Mamluk, Sunni,

Shia, Ishmaeli Assassins—created violent contest andinstability only resolved bygreater violence practiced byunscrupulous warlords suchasZengi,Saladin,orBaibars,none ofwhom flinched frombarbaric atrocities to furthertheir material ends. Like theFranks, theypromotedaself-servingideologyoflegitimateforce. Western Christiansheld no monopoly on

intolerance, any more thanthey did on sanctity. Islamiclawyerswarnedagainst inter-faith fraternization; aneleventh-century Baghdadlegist proposeddiscriminatory dress forChristiansandJews.Thefateofnon-Christiancommunitiesin Outremer was littledifferent to that of Christiancommunities under Islam. Itappeared harsher because the

social configuration of theremaining Muslimpopulation,largelypeasantorartisan, lacked a skilled orwealthy elite, in contrast toMuslimsinChristianSpainorChristian communities in theIslamicworld. This is not todeny the exclusive anddiscriminatory nature ofFrankish rule in Outremer.However, to romanticizethose whom they

discriminated against is torewritethepasttosuitpresentsentimentality.

Inhistwelfth-centurychronicle

of the Crusades,History of the

Outremer, William of Tyre

recounted the events of the first

crusade and the founding of the

crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

King Baldwin II of Jerusalem is

depictedinthisthirteenth-century

manuscript illumination from

William’shistory.

TheHolyLandsontheFrontiers

Spain

In Spain, as in the Baltic,crusading was secondary orcomplementary to secularconsiderations and widerassociation of Christianconquest and holy war. Adecade before the FirstCrusade, Alphonso VI ofCastile had characterized hiscapture of Toledo from theMoors in 1085 “with Christasmyleader”asarestorationof Christian territory and the

recreation of “a holy place.”Itisnotentirelyclearhowfarthe explicit religiosity oftwelfth-century accounts ofearlier campaigns against theMoors in Spain reflected theassimilation of crusadingformulae,anoldertraditionofholy war or a separate localdevelopment. While defenseand restoration of Christianlands matched the newrhetoricoftheJerusalemwar,

indigenous writers andreligious leaders transformedtheIberianpatronalsaint, theApostle James the Great,Santiago, into a “knight ofChrist” and heavenlyintercessor for the success ofChristian warfare. Suchpromotion of a distinctivepan-Iberian war cult helpedlocal rulers retain ownershipoftheircampaignsevenwhenenjoying papal crusade

privileges, while at the sametime reinforcing Christiansolidarity. St. James, aninternationalsaintthroughhisshrineatCompostella,didnotbecome the exclusivepreserve of any one Iberiankingdom, his cult sustainingthe political ideologies of allof them. The same wasgenerally true of the halfdozenIberianMilitaryOrdersfoundedinthesecondhalfof

thetwelfthcentury,includingonededicatedtoSt.James.

An Apostle of Christ, Saint

James is depicted as a conqueror

of the Moors, in this eighteenth

century painting by Giovanni

BattistaTiepolo.The incongruity

of this transformation of one of

Jesus’s disciples into a warrior

saint escaped most medieval

observers.

CrusadinginSpainadopteda local flavor. The greatwarriorkingsofthethirteenth

century, Ferdinand III ofCastile(1217-52)andJamesIof Aragon (1213-76), rolledbacktheMuslimfrontierself-consciously in the name ofGod and each flirted withcarrying the fight beyondIberia, toAfricaorPalestine.Yet neither found thecommitment that led theircontemporary Louis IX ofFrance to theNile.Althoughsome conquests, such as the

capture of Cordoba byFerdinand III in 1236, wereaccompanied by religiousgestures of restoration andpurification familiar from theeastern crusades, and inplaces,asatSeville(captured1248), foreign Christiansettlers were recruited, muchof the Reconquista involvednegotiation andaccommodation of thereligiousandcivillibertiesof

the conquered: James I “theConqueror” of Aragon’sannexation of Mallorca(1229) and Valencia (1238),and Ferdinand Ill’s conquestof Murcia (1243). Christiancomplaints about the calls ofthemuezzinpersistedinsomeareas for centuries.Althoughsuffering from the problemsofbeingruledbyanelitewithseparate laws and religion,MuslimsunderChristianrule,

the mudejars, and Jews andconverts—conversos (Jewishconverts to Christianity) andMoriscos (Muslim converts)—were a feature of Spanishlifeuntilthelatefifteenthandsixteenth centuries, when arecrudescence of amanufactured neo-crusadingreligiousmilitancy led to theimposition of intolerantChristian uniformity underthe Catholic monarchs

Ferdinand II of Aragon(1479-1516) and Isabella ofCastile (1474-1504),coinciding with the finalexpulsion of the Moorishrulers from Granada (1492).This new identification of acrusading mission, whichpersistedunderCharlesVandPhilipII,dependedasheavilyon recasting Castile, inparticular,asitselfanewholyland with a providential

world mission as it did ongenuineAragonese crusadingtraditions. In turn, thisspawned a myth of thecrusading Reconquista andthe providential identity anddestiny of Catholic Spainlater insidiously expropriatedby General Franco and hisfascist apologists, academicaswellaspolitical.

“Isabella the Catholic” is the

title of this c.1839 engraving

depicting Isabella of Castile (r.

1474—1504), queen of Spain

during the completion of the

Reconquista.

Ferdinand II of Aragon (r.

1474–1516), seen here in a

Madrid monument, was king of

Spain during the Reconquista—

anerawhich led to theportrayal

ofCatholicSpainasanotherholy

land.

The fate of Peter II ofAragon (1196-1213), fatherof James the Conqueror,reveals the nuances andcontradictions in the Iberian

experience. The twelfth-century invasion of Spain bythe Almohads, Muslimpuritans from North Africa,had placed the Christianadvances of the previouscentury in jeopardy. In1212,a large international crusaderhost combined with Iberiankings to resist. Beforeconfronting the Almohadforces at Las Navas deTolosa, most of the French

contingents abandoned Peterand the kings of Castile andNavarre, partly overdisagreements with the localrulers’ leniency towarddefeatedMuslim garrisons, afrontierpragmatismthat,asinPalestine, struck the Frenchas scandalous. They also didnot care for the heat. Thesubsequent Christian victorybecame, as a result, almostwholly a Spanish triumph, a

useful detail in the laterprojectionofSpanishdestiny.Fourteen months later PeterwasdefeatedandkilledatthebattleofMuretinLanguedocby an army of Frenchcrusaders ledby thechurch’schampion, Simon deMontfort, testimony to thepolitical cross-currents uponthe surface of whichcrusading bobbed, and theimpossibility of divorcing

“crusade” history from itssecularcontext.After the conquests, new

(or in propaganda termsrestored) sacred and secularlandscapes were created,from converting mosques tochurches to changing Arabicplace names. In some areas,notably inCastile, immigrantsettlement from further northwas encouraged. Elsewhere,the pre-conquest social and

religious structures felt onlymodest immediate impact. Itmay be significant of adecline in frontier militarismthat after 1300, the cult ofSantiago fadedbefore thatofthe Virgin Mary.Nonetheless, the holy wartradition, in its crusadingwrapping, persisted amongthe knightly and nobleclasses, available to thoseengaged in wars against

infidels,Muslimorheathen,alivingculturalforceaswellasa stereotype. While hiscaptainswereobservingWestAfricans outside thestraitjacket of crusadingaesthetics, the Portugueseprince Henry the Navigator(1394-1460) ferventlyembraced crusadingaspirations and campaignedin North Africa. As late as1578, a Portuguese king,

Sebastian, at the head of aninternational force armedwith indulgences and papallegates, fought and died inbattleagainst theMuslimsofMorocco. The penetration ofLatin Christendom into theislandsoftheeasternAtlanticinthefourteenthandfifteenthcenturies attracted crusadinggrants for the dilatio, orextension, of Christendom.The Iberian tradition ensured

asympathetichearingfor theGenoese crusade enthusiastChristopher Columbus. Itformed one strand in theconceptual justification fortheconquestof theAmericasand, more tenuously, in thementality of the slave tradewhichsomesawasavehiclefor expanding Christianity.This was made possible bythe idea, popular by c.1500,that Spain itself (however

imagined)wasaholyland,itsChristian inhabitants newIsraelites, tempered andproved in the fire of theReconquista, championingGod’s cause whether againstinfidels outside Christendomorhereticswithin.

TheBalticOnthefaceofit,theideathatthe crusades in the Balticweredirectedtoconquerholy

lands appears fanciful, giventhat the regions attacked hadno Christian pre-history. Yetperhaps precisely because ofits extreme incongruity, thisconcept gained credence:alone of the regimesestablished in the wake ofcrusader conquest, Prussiaand Livonia wereecclesiastical states. Theassociation came early. Apropagandist exhortation to

attack theWends east of theElbe in 1108 described thecampaignasbeingtoliberate“our Jerusalem.” Thischallenging analogy operatedinwaysthatremainedcentralto the early association ofcrusading with Germanexpansion eastwards; cashinginonthenewimpetustoholywar provided by theJerusalem wars; the need todefend Christendom; and the

implication that the warswereaimedatrecoveringlostChristian land. Some landsbeyond the Elbe targeted byGerman crusaders in thetwelfth century had beenoccupied by the Ottonianemperors before the greatSlavrevoltof983drovethemback. Other areas hadexperienced more recentmissionizing of fluctuatingsuccess. On the shifting

German-Slav frontier, areasthat had been conquered,even as far back as the tenthcentury, and then lost couldattract accusations ofapostasy. This confusioncould work the other way;one contingent of the 1147crusaders found themselvesbesieging recentlyChristianizedStettin.Thedistinctivecharacterof

theBalticcrusades lay in the

explicit alliance of crusadeandconversion,or,assaintlyBernard of Clairvaux put it,conversion or extermination.Innocent III freely employedthe language of compulsionto “drag the barbarians intothe net of orthodoxy.” Thisunsound doctrineacknowledged the religiouscomponent in ethnicity,cultural identity, and racialawareness. In contrast with

SpainortheNearEast,intheBaltic, conversion came asthe inevitable corollary andrecognition of conquest.Paradoxically, this allowedfor greater culturalaccommodation andtransmission from Slav toGerman and vice versa.Descendants of the paganWendish prince Niklot,victim of the first crusaderattack in 1147 and killed by

Christians in 1160, becamethe Germanized princes anddukesofMecklenberg,oneofwhom joined a crusade toLivonia in 1218. Howeverrepellent to the religiouslyfastidious, enforcedconversion worked; by 1400theBaltichadbecomeaLatinChristian lake, even ifelements of pagan cultureswam freely beneath thesurface. Conversion not

backed by coercion wouldhavehadaharderstruggle,asthe successful resistance ofpaganLithuaniashowed,onlyaccepting conversionundefeated on its own termsin 1386. The application ofcrusadingincentivesfromthemid-twelfth century did notmanufacturethislinkbetweenforce and faith, it merelyrecognized a process ofcultural and political

imperialism already wellestablished.Crusading in the Baltic

contributed to the twelfth-century German expansioninto territory between theElbe and Oder and westernPomerania; thirteenth-centuryGerman penetration into thesouthernBalticlandsbetweenthe Vistula and Niemen,Prussia, Courland, and later,in the fourteenth century,

Pomerelia west of theVistula; the transmarinecolonization of Livonia by acombination of churchmenand merchants from Germantrading centers such asLübeck and Bremen; theaggressive expansionism ofthe Danish crown, especiallyin northern Estonia; and theadvance of the Swedes intoFinland. Until the thirteenthcenturycrusading,asopposed

to more general associationsof war with Divine favor,played only an intermittentrole. The application ofcrusade privileges to thesummer raids on thewesternWends during the SecondCrusade in1147hadmore todowithbuyingSaxonsupportand internal peacewithin theempire in Conrad Ill’sabsence in the Holy Landthan the institution of a new

sustained crusade front. Oneof the protagonists in the1147 expeditions, Albert theBear, did not need crusadeprivileges to carve out aprincipality of Brandenbergbeyond the Elbe; histerritorialacquisitivenesswasin any case portrayed byapologistsasattractingGod’sapproval. Such conquestswent together with theimplanting of bishoprics and

monasteries and so earnedclerical plaudits. The secularreality was brutal for theconquered, harsh for theGermanandFlemish settlers,and, as one pious frontierpriest lamented, encouragedthe avarice rather than thepiety of another 1147crusader, Henry the Lion,duke of Saxony. Between1147and1193onlyonepapalcrusade grant was directed

toward the Baltic, in 1171.However, the often savagewars of conquest andconversion conducted againstthe Slavs by the GermanprincesandkingsofDenmarkwere recognized by thepapacy as “inspired with theheavenly flame, strengthenedby the arms ofChrist, armedwith the shield of faith andprotectedbydivinefavor,”asAlexander III put it in 1169.

Nonetheless, to ascriberesponsibility for medievalGerman imperialism on thecrusadewouldbemisleading;onemight aswell accuse theChristian Church. It mightalso be added that the Balticpaganswere no less keen onmassacring opponents anderadicating symbols of analien faith. Although, exceptin Lithuania, the pagan holywars ended in defeat, this

does not mean they did nothappen.

CrusaderHenrytheLion, duke

ofSaxony,commemoratedinthis

statue in Braunschweig,

Germany, combined holy war

withsecularterritorialwarsinthe

Balticregion.

The real impetus towardaffixing technical apparatusof crusading—vow, cross,indulgence, and so on—toChristian conquest in theBaltic came when attention

shifted from the westernSlavsofthesouthernBaltictotheheathentribesfurthereast,in Livonia, Estonia, Finland,and Prussia, the theatres ofcrusading operations thatdominated the period fromthe 1190s. While defense ofthe missionary churchesestablished in Livonia orEstonia around 1200 wererelatively easily justified,support for extensive

conquests in either region,stilllessinPrussia,demandedthese areas acquire a newholy status. Each answeredthis need in different ways.The campaigns of the kingsof Denmark along thesouthernBaltic coast and thesouthernshoreof theGulfofFinland in northern Estoniaattracted sporadic papalgrants of crusade privilegesfamiliar elsewhere, while the

monarchs surroundedthemselves with the usefulaura of Christian warriors,“active knights ofChrist,” tojustify foreign conquest andinternalauthority.Thepagansweretoberootedoutbyforceand Christendom expanded.Here the conquerors wereperforming holy tasks andthus their conquests, byincorporation intoChristendom, became ipso

factoholy.Away from the muddled

but powerful religiosity ofChristian monarchy, theconsecration of crusadetargetsfollowedmorepreciselines. From c.1202, themissionary bishop of Rigarecruited a religious order ofknights, theMilitia of ChristorSwordBrothers, todefendand extend his diocese inLivoniacenteredontheRiver

Dvina. A few years later hiscolleague on the Polish-Prussian frontier assembledasimilar body, the Militia ofChrist of Livonia against thePrussians, also known as theKnights of Dobrin (orDobryzin) after their originalheadquarters on the Vistula.Again, the status of theconquestswasdefinedbythatof the conquerors, bishops,and sworn professed, aswell

as professional, knights ofChrist. The dedication of theChristian settlement createdat Riga by the missionariesand merchants to the VirginMary allowed Livonia to bedepicted as the land of theMother of God, her dowry,allowing crusade apologistsin the region to describecrusadersthereaspilgrimsor“themilitiaofpilgrims.”Thisbroughtthemfurtherintoline

with crusaders elsewhere;even crusaders against theAlbigensians were calledpilgrimsbysome,almostasasine qua non of legitimacy.Thefirsttwochurchesbuiltinthe new townofRiga before1209werededicatedtoMary,the patroness, and Peter, theguarantor of ecclesiasticalprivileges. When theTeutonic Knights took overwar and government in both

Prussia and Livonia in the1230s, absorbing the othermilitaryordersintheprocess,and from 1245 the directionofapermanentcrusadeintheregion,theidentificationwiththe Virgin Mary wascomplete, as she was thepatroness of the Germanorder. In Livonia the knightsbore her image as a warbanner. With the papacydesignating Prussia a papal

fief (as part of its anti-imperial policy) in 1234, theTeutonic Knights’ territorywas doubly sanctified. In theabsence of a historicjustification for war, a latethirteenth-century rhymingchronicle from Livonia,probably by a TeutonicKnight, insinuated atranscendent context.Beginning his work withaccounts of the Creation,

Pentecost,andthemissionsofthe Early Church, the authoradmitted that no apostlereached Livonia, unlike themyth of James convertingSpain. Instead, a highermissionwasbeingpursuedinthe wastes of the easternBaltic,theholytaskbegunbythe Apostles of proselytizingthe world now carriedforward through service anddeath in the armies of the

Mother ofGod in defense ofHerland.

Twelfth-andthirteenth-century

Christian settlements in the

Baltic region were often

dedicated to theVirginMary, as

depicted in this seal of the

Hochmeister, Grand Master, of

theorderoftheTeutonicKnights.

Such literary devices couldreassure participants andattractrecruitswhilenotfullyreflectingthenatureofwarinPrussia,Livonia,andEstonia.Not all enemies were pagan.

In Estonia, the TeutonicKnights competed for powerwith fellow crusaders, theDanes. In 1242 an attack onthe Orthodox Christians ofRussian Pskov ended in thefamous defeat on LakePeipus/Chud by AlexanderNevsky, evocativelyimagined in Eisenstein’smemorablepropagandistfilm.In Prussia, especially in thewest, German and Flemish

settlement appearedsubstantial; in Livonia andEstonia, only accessible by atricky and expensive seavoyage when the water wasfree of ice, negligible andalmost exclusively limited tothe fortified religious tradingposts on the main rivers.Prussia witnessed a slowprocess of acculturationsimilar to that between theElbe and the Oder. Slavs

became Germans, anuncomfortable thought forlater racial nationalists onboth sides of the linguisticdivide.Thejudicialpluralismandsegregationfamiliarfromothercrusadingfrontsdidnotprevent the PrussiansadoptingelementsofGermaninheritance laws. Overgenerations, the brutality offorced conversion,occupation, alien settlement,

and discrimination againstnatives transformed Prussiainto a distinctively Germanprovince.By contrast, only asmall military, clerical, andcommercial elite survived inEstonia and Livonia, wherethe Teutonic Knightsremained until 1562, thirty-seven years after the order’ssecularization in Prussia. Inthe shadow of this past,Hitler, with his obscenely

warped historical squint,rejected the loss of any partof Prussia from the Reich,demanding Memel,established by the Germaninvaders in 1252, from theLithuanians in March 1939,anactthatprovokedBritain’sguarantee to protect Poland.Yet a few months later, heconsigned theBalticstates tothe lot of the Russians as iftheywereless“German.”

Centuries after the Crusades,

Adolf Hitler, pictured giving a

speech in 1942, repeated old

GermanclaimstopartsofEastern

EuropeandtheBalticstates.

However, the linkfromtheTeutonic Knights to the SSandthenationalizedracismofthe Third Reich, lovinglytraced by Himmler and hishistorically illiterate ghouls,relied on rancid imagination

notfact.Thecrusadesdidnotdrive the expansion ofGerman power, nor theexpansion of Spain. Widercultural, economic,demographic, social, andtechnological forces did that.In so far as these impulseswere articulated in religiousterms, crusading offered aparticular vocabulary, bothpractical and inspirational,that could service self-

referential ideologies andself-righteous policies ofdomination. Holy symbolsachievedculturalandpoliticalsignificance, the Catholicchurches and churchmentransmitted a distinctivewestern culture, yet, for alltheir importance, in theexpansion of LatinChristendom across itsfrontiers, the grammar andsyntax remained resolutely

secular.

TheHolyLandswithinFortressChristendomTheimageofChristendomasa beleaguered fortress, withbastions or antemuralesopposing the advance of theinfidel,hadalonghistory.In1089, Urban II so describedthe projected rebuilding ofTarragona on the Spanishcoast south of Barcelona.

From the fourteenth century,the whole concept ofantemurales gained widecurrency along the frontierwith the Ottomans fromPoland, through Hungary tothe Adriatic. As defense ofthese bastions clearly formedoneaspectofholywar,rulersalong these frontiersthemselves adopted holywarrhetoric and promoted thesacralization of their

individual territories, therebyengenderingastrongsenseofnationalexceptionalism.Away from the front line,

participationincrusadingalsobecame a central feature ofemergentmythsandritualsofcorporateornationalidentity.Pisa, Genoa, and especiallyVenice proudly proclaimedtheircivicinvolvementintheeastern crusades in art,literature, and civic

ceremony.InFlorence,wherethecrossactedasasignbothfor thecrusadeand thecity’spopolo, or populace,participation in crusadingprovided opportunities toreinforce civicexceptionalism; the bannerborne at Damietta in 1219becamea revered relic in theChurch of San Giovanni.Similarattention to their roleincrusading,especiallyinthe

east, came from the cities ofnorthern Europe, such asCologne and London. TheDanish kings adopted thecross as their symbol around1200. The canonization ofroyal holy warriors andcrusaders becamewidespread: Charlemagne,regarded as a proto-crusader(canonized in 1166); St. EricIX of Sweden (d.1160,canonized 1167), scourge of

the Finnish “enemies of thefaith”; Ferdinand III ofCastile (d.1252, a recognizedcultfigurefromthethirteenthcentury, officially canonized1671); and Louis IX ofFrance (d.1270, canonized1297). Some of the legendscirculated after thecanonizationofKingLadislasof Hungary (d.1095,canonized 1192) portrayedhim as the lost leader of the

FirstCrusade,infactevokingthecareerofBelaIII(d.1196)who had sponsored Ladislas’sanctification. Politically anddiplomatically having pulledHungary, like Denmark andlater Poland, toward LatinChristendom, the crusadeswere then recruited tosanctify local royaldynasticism.This association was most

evidentinFrance.TheFrench

kings’ habit of crusadinghelped create what has beencalled the “religion ofmonarchy” with its elevationof the kingdom by royalpropagandists from c.1300into a Holy Land, and theFrench as God’s ChosenPeople.Astrikingilluminatedmanuscript produced at Acrec.1280 depicted Louis IX atDamiettain1249emblazonedwithfleursdelis;thereisnot

a cross in sight. The crusadeand the providential destinyof France and its rulingdynasty merged in the laterMiddle Ages into a form ofapocalyptic royal or nationalmessianism. OnecontemporaryprophesiedthatJoan of Arc’s victories overthe English in 1429 wouldresult in her leading KingCharles VII (1422-61) toconquer the Holy Land, a

theme recalled in 1494whenCharlesVIIIofFrance(1483-98) launched his invasion ofItaly by declaring hisintention to recoverJerusalem. Even after theFrench religious polity hadbeen shattered by theReformation and thedestructiveWars of Religionin the second half of thesixteenth century, the imageof crusading as the special

preserveandresponsibilityof“theMostChristianKings”ofFrance (a twelfth-centurycourtesy title) survivedamong both Catholic andHuguenotapologistsofHenryIV (1589-1610). This Frenchexperience found a closeparallel in late medievalSpain, in particular Castile,where a prophetic traditionnurtured by the Reconquistainspired a sense that the

Iberian holy wars requiredultimate fulfillment in therecovery of Jerusalem. Theexpulsion of theMoors fromGranadaledtoNorthAfricanforays by Ferdinand and hisgrandson Charles V (1516—55)whichwerecastbyroyalpolemicistsaspreludestotherecovery of the HolySepulchre.ForCharles’sson,Philip II (1555—98), thesynergy of God’s war and

Spain’s war occupied thecenterofhisworldview.This transformation of

lands of crusaders intocrusading kingdoms and thusintoholylandswentonestepfurther by harnessing themodel of the Old TestamentIsraelites and the Maccabeesdefending God’s heritage,which had occupied aprominentplaceintraditionalcrusadesemiotics.IftheHoly

Land or Christendom werepatria,whynotthecrusaders’ownkingdomsorcitystates?Pope Clement V’s answer in1311 was clear: “Just as theIsraelites are known to havebeen granted the Lord’sinheritanceby theelectionofHeaven, to perform thehiddenwishesofGod,sothekingdom of France has beenchosen as the Lord’s specialpeople.” Others could play

thesamegame.ReflectingonEnglish victories in theHundred Years’ War toparliament in 1377,Chancellor Haughton, bishopof St. David’s, commentedthat “God would never havehonoredthislandinthesameway as he did Israel… if itwere not thatHe had chosenit as his heritage.” Onepopular verse of the timeevensuggestedthat“thepope

hadbecomeFrench,butJesushad become English.” God’scareer as an Englishman hadmanycenturiestorun.

This nineteenth-century

painting by Sir John Gilbert

shows the morning of the Battle

of Agincourt, as Henry V’s

chaplainusesthelanguageofthe

crusadestoblesssoldiersdressed

“inthearmorofpenitence.”

These Scripturalborrowingsoperatedwithin apre-crusading tradition offinding Old Testamentprecedents for the defense of

homelands, and cannotnecessarily be linked directlywithcrusading.However, thelanguage employed by thoseattempting to sacralizenational warfare was socongruent to current crusaderhetoric as to make neatdistinctions impossible;propagandists probablydeliberately elided the two.Of course, not all nationalholy wars were associated

with crusading. TheHussitesin fifteenth-century Bohemiaself-consciously created theirownholyland,renamingcultsitesafterplacesinPalestine,such as Mount Tabor orMountHoreb,whilerejectingutterly the crusade traditionthat fuelled the campaignslaunched against them. Bycontrast, within CatholicChristendom, from thefourteenth century crusading

motifs were increasinglyrecruited to national causes,suchas theconflictsbetweenFranceandFlanders,Englandand Scotland, and, mostpervasively, England andFrance. Occasionally, as in1383 or 1386, actual crusadegrants were applied tocampaigns in the HundredYears’War.Morefrequently,language and images of holywar made familiar by

crusading were inserted intodescriptions or justificationsofevents.HenryV’schaplainpresented the English atAgincourt (1415) as “God’speople,” dressed “in thearmor of penitence,”encouraged by their king tofollow the example of JudasMaccabeus. Suchtransferencewaseasedbytheubiquitous appropriation ofthe cross as national uniform

across Europe in the laterMiddle Ages (for example,the red crossof theEnglish),a symbol that spoke moreloudlythanlegalorcanonicallogic-chopping. There weremany influences on thecreation of national holylands and the sacralizing ofpolitical rule and identity inthe later Middle Ages. In sofar as self-defining civic,dynastic,ornationalconflicts

adoptedsomeideologicalandrhetorical features derivedfrom the most charismaticexpression of medieval holywar, the crusade was one ofthem.

The Lutheran Frauenkirche

rises over Dresden, Germany.

The Protestant Reformation,

sparked by Martin Luther,

questioned the legacy of the

Crusades, since Protestants did

not consider the holy wars as

being exclusively Catholic

efforts.

CONCLUSION

CrusadingOur

Contemporary

LONGBEFORETHELASTROMAN

Catholic took the cross,

perhaps in the earlyeighteenth century for theHabsburgs against theOttomans in central Europeor the kings ofSpain againstMuslim pirates in theMediterranean, the historyand legends of the Crusadeshad entered the mythicmemoryofChristianEurope.FromtheFirstCrusade,the

wars of the cross had beensustained, developed, and

refined by concurrentdescriptionandinterpretation,popularandacademic.Bythefifteenthcentury,appreciationof what passed for crusadehistory underpinned allserious discussion of futureprojects. Provoked byimmediate political concerns,such studies tended topolemic and self-interest,blind to the distinctionbetweenlegendandevidence.

From humanist scholarshipand theological hostility inthesixteenthcenturyemergeda more independenthistoriography.Theacademicstudy of crusading—or holywarasitwasgenerallycalled—was encouraged anddistorted by the two greatcrises that threatened to tearChristendom apart: theadvanceof theOttomansandtheProtestantreformations.

The sixteenth and earlyseventeenthcenturiessecuredthe continued culturalprominence of the Crusades.Muchoftheresponsibilityforthis lay with Protestantscholars in Germany andFrance. Despite RomanCatholics seeking crusadingprivileges when fightingProtestants, admiration forthe faith and heroism of thecrusaders crossed

confessional divides, as didfear of the Ottoman Turks.The refusal of certainProtestantscholars todismisscrusading simply as a papalcorruption provided a bridgebetween the Roman Catholicpast and what they imaginedas the Protestant future. TheCrusades were rendered asnational achievements,ecumenical even, at a timewhen religious passions still

burned violently. Elevatingthe Crusades away frompartisan religious ownershipallowed the past to bereconciled with the presentthrough inherited nationalidentities, a process thatcontributed to thecreationofasecularconceptofEurope.As long as the Catholic

Church attached crusadingapparatus towars against theTurks and confessional

enemies, and political andsocial radicalism werearticulated in religious terms,some still found itcontroversial. For others,crusading slipped into thequiet reaches of history,settling into channels ofmoral and religiousdisapprovalor admiration fordistant heroism, often tingedwith nationalism. With theevaporation of the Ottoman

threat in the eighteenthcentury, past wars againstIslam could be viewed withdetached rather than engagedprejudice. Observers of theapparently defeated culturecould indulge their tastes forthe exotic and the alienwiththefrissonofdangerreplacedby a thrill of superiority lentintellectual respectability byemerging concepts of changeand progress. Fear of the

Turksgaveway tocontempt,fascination, and a sort ofcultural and historicaltourism.MuslimsintheNearEast, increasingly accessibleas the sea-lanes becamepassable, were transformedfrom demons to curiosities.Such concerns produced aninevitablenarrowingof focusonto crusades to the HolyLandandChristianOutremer.Theyalsomadetheemotions

behind crusading seem evenmoreremote.The prevalent eighteenth-

century intellectual attitude,litbyanti-clericalism,wassetin a disdainful grimace atwhat was caricatured as theignorance, fanaticism, andviolenceofearlier times.YetGibbon’s “World’s Debate”appeared to have been wonby the west, with Europeansuccesses in Mogul India

supplying further consolationand confirmation ofsuperiority.Externalstimulusto shifting perceptions camefrom the elite fashion forOriental and Near Easternartifactsandthedirectcontactwith the Levant followingNapoleon Bonaparte’scampaign inEgyptandSyriain 1798-99 and the openingup of the region to upper-class tourists, from

Chateaubriand to BenjaminDisraeli, whose romanticinstinctswerestirredbywhatthey saw or imagined. Thepast required re-arrangementtosuitthesenewenthusiasmsand assumptions. Thusdiscussionof theCrusades totheeasthadtodwellmoreonthe motives and behavior ofthe crusaders rather than thedismal outcome of theirexertions, on cultural values

and potential rather thanundoubted failure. TheCrusades were refashionedinto a symbol of westernvalorandculturalendeavor,aprocess encouraged by thegrowingpopularityofanotherform of “otherness” tocontrast with the self-perceived modernity ofEnlightenment Europe—medievalism. The earlynineteenth century saw the

combination of Orientalismand medievalism revivecrusading as a set of literaryreferences.Asanexampleofpassionoverpragmatism, theCrusade became an analogyfor romantic or escapistpolicies of those troubled bycreeping capitalism andindustrialization.Thepoliticalexploitation of the history ofthe Crusades possessed asharper edge in continental

Europe, where it became atool of reaction against theideals and practices both ofthe French Revolution andliberalism. The new cult ofneo-chivalry supplied moral,religious,andculturalaswellas actual architecturalbuttresses for an aristocraticancienrégimelosingmuchofitsexclusivityifnotpower.From the late eighteenth

century, the word “crusade”

wasappliedmetaphoricallyoranalogously to any vigorousgood cause. More precisely,in the absence of devastatinggeneral conflicts after 1815,nineteenth-century Europespawneda cult ofwarwhichcould be projected back ontotheCrusades.Theassociationof just causes and sanctifiedviolence, sealed with theconfused sentimentality ofRomanticneo-chivalry,found

stark concrete form in warmemorials across westernEurope after the First WorldWar, a conflict regularlydescribedbyclergyaswellasby politicians as “a greatcrusade”;bishopsmighthavebeenexpectedtoknowbetter.More scrupulous observerscaviled at such meretriciousrhetoric, yet the imagerypersisted even when theidealism had drowned in

Flanders mud; GeneralEisenhower’s Order for theDay of June 6, 1944,described the D-Dayoffensive as “a greatcrusade.” The connectionwith spiritually redemptiveholy warfare had becomedrained of much meaning.Any conflict promoted astranscending territorial orother material aims couldattract the crusade epithet,

increasingly a lazy synonymfor ideological conflict or,worse, a sloppy but highlycharged metaphor forpolitical conflicts betweenprotagonists from contrastingcultures and faiths. In waysunimaginable whenRunciman denounced themorality of crusading in themid-twentieth century, theCrusadesnolongerjusthauntthe memory but stalk the

streetsof twenty-first-centuryinternational politics, inparticularintheNearEast.Inan irony often lost onprotagonists, these publicperceptions of the Crusadesthat underpin confrontationalrhetoric derive from acommon source. The NearEastern radical or terroristwho rails against “western”neo-crusaders is operating inexactly the same conceptual

and academic tradition asthose in the west whocontinue to insinuate thelanguage of the crusade intotheir approach to theproblems of the region. Thisisbynomeansauniversalsetof mentalities, asdemonstrated from theliterary and academic clichéof a civilized medievalIslamic world brutalized bywestern barbarians, to the

almost studiously anti-crusading rhetoric andpoliciesofNATOandothersin the Balkan wars of the1990s, to opposition to thecrude caricaturing of IslamafterSeptember2001.There-entryoftheCrusadesintothepolitics of the Near East isbaleful and intellectuallybogus.

This1915GermanWorldWar

IposterbyFritzBoehle(afteran

AlbrechtDürerwoodcut)istitled

In Deo Gratia (Thanks Be to

God). The poster, promoting the

Germanwareffort,reads:“Giv’st

thou amite. Be it e’er so small.

ThoushaltbeblessedbyGod.”

President Bush II andUsamabinLadenareco-heirstothelegacyofanineteenth-century European construct.

Here, one of the mostinfluential historians of theCrusades was JosephFrançois Michaud (1767-1839). A publishingentrepreneur, Michaudcombined uncriticalantiquarianism with a keensense of the market andprevailing popular sentiment.Amonarchist,nationalist,andanti-Revolutionary Christian,Michaudalliedadmirationfor

the Crusades’ ideals with asupremacist triumphalismover Islam. He helpedprovide apparent historicallegitimacy for colonialismand cultural imperialism,increasinglythelitmustestofEuropean hegemony andnational status. Thuscrusading could betransmutedintoaprecursorofChristian Europeansuperiority and ascendancy,

taking its place in what wasproclaimed as the march ofwestern progress. Michaud’sconvenient and seductivevisionleftanindeliblestain.Yet Arab, Arabist, and

Islamic outrage ignored theuncomfortable fact thatMichaud’s construct playedits part in setting their ownagenda too. In rallyingopinion against Europeanintrusion,theOttomanSultan

Abdulhamid II (1876-1909)labeledtheirimperialismasacrusade, his remark that“EuropeisnowcarryingoutaCrusade against us in theformofapoliticalcampaign.”Much subsequent Islamicdiscourseonwesternattitudesto theCrusadesand theNearEast has been colored by anegative acceptance of theMichaudversionofhistoryasif this were the immutable

western response orhistorically accurate. Nocontinuity exists in Arabicresponses to westernaggression betweenmedievalcrusading and modernpolitical hostility, any morethan there is betweenmedieval and modern jihad,except in rhetoric and anahistorical appeal to thepast.Assumptions of an inherentconflict of power and

victimization that elevates awholly unhistorical linkbetween modern colonialismandmedieval crusading. It isMichaud in a mirror.Occidentalism andOrientalism share the samewestern frame. The idea thatthemodernpolitical conflictsintheNearEastorelsewherederivefromthe legacyof theCrusades or are beingconducted as neo-crusades in

anything except extremistdiatribeisdeceitful.All sides seem reluctant to

accept that the images ofcrusade and jihad introducedinto late twentieth- andtwenty-first-century conflictsare not time-veneratedtraditions of action or abuse,butmodernimports.

Battle between Christians and

Muslims in the Holy Land is

depictedinthisilluminationfrom

the fourteenth-century French

manuscript,HistoryofGodfreyof

Bouillon.Modern politicians still

sometimes invoke the Crusades,

whether in reference to the

Western-led “War on Terror”

againstIslamicextremists,ortoa

struggle against Western

aggressors by aggrieved Muslim

nations.

It has been observed that noIslamic state has formallylaunched a jihad against anon-Muslim opponent since

the demise of the OttomanEmpire after the FirstWorldWar. Even that Islamic holywar had been sponsored andencouraged by the Turks’German allies. Most Africanand Near Eastern jihadsproclaimed in the nineteenthcentury and since were notagainst infidel imperialistsbutIslamicrivals,oppressors,and heretics or for religiousreform. This is not to deny

the presence of jihadlanguageandtheory,asinthepropaganda of states at warwith the State of Israel in1948, 1967, or 1973.However, there is nothingold-fashioned, still less“medieval,” about thetechniques, recruitment, orideology of al-Qaeda. Thedeviouspolemicalassociationbetween “crusaders” and“Jews”ishistoricalnonsense.

Al-Qaeda’s internationalreach is a creation ofmodernity and globalizationas surely as theWorldWideWeb. Many states mostdisliked by those who claimto be fearful of Islam areexplicitly secular. Yetfanciful analogies withcrusading have accompaniedmost major conflicts in theeastern Mediterranean fromtheFirstWorldWaronwards,

including unlikelyassociationssuchasthesiegeof Beirut in 1982 with thesiegeofAcrein1189-91.TheArabic propagandatransmuting Israelis intocrusaders is a directconsequenceofthis.Whileontheir side some Israeliextremists hark back to anolder tradition of almostMaccabeanrevivalism,othersarecontenttore-fashiontheir

landscapetoexclude,inplacenames or archaeologicaldesignation, Arabic traces,seeingtheStateofIsraelasaliberation not an occupation.There are obvious historicparallels with ChristianOutremer, but also withUmayyadPalestineorRomanSyria—conquerors imposingtheir own space. However,Israelis are not the newcrusaders, anymore than the

Americans. Saddam Husseinwas not the new Saladin,even though they shared abirthplace.To imagine otherwise goes

beyond fraudulence. It playsonacheaphistoricismthatatonce inflames, debases, andconfuses current conflicts,draining them of rationalmeaning or legitimatesolution. The Crusadesreflected central human

concerns of belief andidentity that can only beunderstood on their ownterms, in their own time; so,too, their adoption andadaptation by latergenerations. While it istempting todrawconclusionsderived from geographicalcongruity or superficialpolitical similarities, the landin which Jakelin de Maillyfell over eight hundred years

ago and the cause for whichhe died held truths for histime,notours.

FURTHERREADING•

Historically, the study of theCrusades has usually beenmarked by prejudice, bias,and judgmentalism. Verylittle surviving primaryevidence is without inherentdistortion. Laterinterpretations have

consistently reflected theconcerns of the historiansrather than objectiveassessment of thephenomenon. Medievalobservers represented theCrusades in a scripturalcontextassignifiersofdivineprovidence. Since thesixteenth century, shiftingreligious, political, andintellectual fashions havedetermined very different

presentations:confessionalorphilosophical disdain,romantic exoticism,assumptions of culturalconflict, colonial apologetics,imperialism,andnationalism.Some have always sought toframe the Crusades as amirror of the modern age,reassuring or troubling insimilarities or contrasts.Modern scholarship, whileembracing a far wider range

ofsources,fromcanonlawtoarchaeology, is no less proneto factionalism, the influenceof politics, as in the Israelischool ledby JoshuaPrawer,orofconflictingmetaphysicalconstructsofthepast.Onthecontentious issue ofdefinition, the ecclesiasticalhistorianGilesConstable hascharacterized the competinginterpreters as generalists,who locate the origins and

nature of crusading in thelong development ofChristian holy war before1095;popularists,whofavorthe idea that crusadingemerged as an expression ofpopular piety; traditionalistswhoinsistonthecentralityofJerusalemandtheHolyLandto legitimate crusading; andpluralists, who concentrateon pious motivation, canonlaw, and papal authorization

to include all conflictsenjoying the privileges ofwars of the cross regardlessof destination or purpose.Such academic disputes mayappear arcane. Yet theymatterifunderstandingofthepast is to be liberated fromoversimplified andmisleadingpublichistoryandthemawofmodern polemic.Having previously wreakedsomuchhavoc, theCrusades

shouldnotberecruitedtothebattlegrounds of the twenty-first century nor yetcondescendingly condemnedasoneofChristianity’slegionofaberrations.

GENERAL

M. Barber, The NewKnighthood(Cambridge,1994)

C. Erdmann, The Origins

of the Idea ofCrusading, tr.Marshall W. Baldwinand Walter Goffart(Princeton, 1977) (theclassicgeneralisttext)

A. Forey, The MilitaryOrders (London,1992)

C. Hillenbrand, TheCrusades: IslamicPerspectives

(Edinburgh,1999)N. Housley, The Later

Crusades (Oxford,1992)(pluralist)

H. E. Mayer, TheCrusades, 2nd edn.(Oxford, 1988)(traditionalist)

J. Riley-Smith, TheCrusades: A ShortHistory (London,1987)(pluralist)

J. Riley-Smith (ed.), TheOxford IllustratedHistory of theCrusades (Oxford,1995)

J.Riley-Smith,WhatWerethe Crusades?, 3rdedn. (London, 2002)(pluralist)

S.Runciman,AHistoryofthe Crusades(Cambridge, 1951–54)

(traditionalist, oncedescribed as “the lastgreat medievalchronicle”)

C.Tyerman,TheInventionof the Crusades(London,1998)

HOLYWAR

N. Housley, ReligiousWarfare in Europe1400-1536 (Oxford,

2002)J. Muldoon, Popes,

Lawyers and Infidels(Liverpool,1979)

F. H. Russell, The JustWar in the MiddleAges (Cambridge,1975)

HOLYLANDS

R.Barlett,TheMaking ofEurope (London,

1993)E. Christiansen, The

Northern Crusades,2nd edn. (London,1997)

D. Lomax, TheReconquest of Spain(London,1978)

J. Prawer, The LatinKingdomofJerusalem(London,1972)

R. C. Smail, Crusading

Warfare (Cambridge,1956)

THEBUSINESSOFTHECROSS

J. Brundage, Canon Lawand the Crusader(Madison,1969)

P.Cole,ThePreachingofthe Cross to the HolyLand 1095—1270(Cambridge, Mass.,1991)

S. Lloyd, English SocietyandtheCrusade1216-1307(Oxford,1988)

C. Tyerman,England andthe Crusades 1095—1588(Chicago,1988)

INTRODUCTIONANDCONCLUSION

M. Benvenisti, SacredLandscape: TheBuried History of the

Holy Land since 1948(London,2000)

P.Partner,GodofBattles:Holy Wars ofChristianity and Islam(London,1997)

E. Said, Orientalism(London,1979)

E. Siberry, The NewCrusaders (Aldershot,2000)

CHRONOLOGY•

c.400AugustineofHippooutlinesaChristiantheoryofjustwar

638

JerusalemiscapturedbytheArabsunderCaliphUmarCharlemagnethe

800 FrankiscrownedRomanEmperoroftheWest

9thcentury

HolywarsproclaimedagainstMusliminvadersofItaly

11thcentury

PeaceandTruceofGodmovementsinpartsofFrancemobilizearmsbearerstoprotecttheChurch

1053

LeoIXoffersremissionofsinstohistroopsfightingtheNormansofsouthernItaly

1050s–70s

SeljukTurksinvadeNearEast

1071

SeljukTurksdefeatByzantinesatManzikert;theyoverrunAsiaMinorandestablishacapitalatNicaea

1074

PopeGregoryVIIproposesacampaignfromthewesttohelpByzantiumandliberatetheHolySepulchre

1095

ByzantineappealtoPopeUrbanIIformilitaryaidagainsttheTurks;UrbanII’spreachingtourofFrance(ends

1096);CouncilofClermontproclaimsCrusade

1096–99 FirstCrusade

1101onward

SmallercrusadestoHolyLand

1104 Acrecaptured

1107–08

CrusadeofBohemundofTarantoagainstByzantium

1109 Tripolicaptured

c.1113

OrderoftheHospitalofSt.JohninJerusalemrecognized;militarizedbyc.1130

1114onward CrusadesinSpain

1120

OrderoftheTemplefoundedinJerusalemtoprotectpilgrims

FirstLateran

1123 CouncilextendsJerusalemprivilegestoSpanishCrusades

1144 EdessacapturedbyZengiofAleppo

1145–49 SecondCrusade

1149onward

FurthercrusadesinSpainandtheBaltic;afewtotheHolyLand

Nural-Dinof

1154 AleppocapturesDamascus

1163–69

FranksofJerusalemcontestcontrolofEgypt

1169 SaladinsucceedsasrulerofEgypt

1174

DeathofNural-Din;SaladinbeginstounifySyriawithEgyptBattleofHattin;Saladindestroys

1187 armyofKingdomofJerusalem;JerusalemfallstoSaladin

1188–92 ThirdCrusade

1193 Saladindies1193–1230

CrusadestoLivoniaintheBaltic

1198

FoundationofTeutonicKnightsinAcre;PopeInnocentIIIproclaimsFourth

Crusade

1199

ChurchtaxationinstitutedfortheCrusade;CrusadeagainstMarkwardofAnweilerinSicily

1201–04 FourthCrusade

CrusadesintheBalticbyTeutonicKnights(Prussia),SwordBrothers

13thcentury

(Livonia),Danes(Prussia,Livonia,Estonia),andSwedes(EstoniaandFinland);CrusadesagainstGermanpeasantsandBosnians

1208–29

AlbigensianCrusadeChildren’sCrusade;AlmohadsdefeatedbySpanish

1212 ChristiancoalitionatLasNavasdeTolosa

1213

InnocentIIIproclaimsFifthCrusadeandextendscrusadeprivilegestothosewhocontributebutdonotgooncrusade

1215

FourthLateranCouncilauthorizes

regularcrusadetaxation

1217–29 FifthCrusade

1231onward

CrusadesagainsttheByzantinestodefendwesternconquestsinGreece

1239–68

CrusadesagainstHohenstaufenrulersofGermanyandSicily

1239–41

CrusadestoHolyLandofTheobald,CountofChampagne,andRichard,EarlofCornwall;crusadersdefeatedatGaza(1239)

1242

TeutonicKnightsdefeatedbyAlexanderNevskyatLakeChud

Jerusalemlostto

1244 Muslims;LouisIXofFrancetakesthecross

1248–54

FirstCrusadeofLouisIXofFrance

1250 MamlukstakeruleinEgypt(to1517)

1251 FirstShepherds’Crusade

1260

MamluksrepulseMongolsatAinJalut;Baibarsbecomessultanof

Egypt(to1277)

1261 GreeksrecoverConstantinople

1267 LouisIXtakescrossagain

1268 FallofAntiochtoBaibarsofEgypt

1269 AragoneseCrusadetoHolyLand

1270LouisIX’sCrusadeendsatTunis,wherehedies

1271–72

CrusadetoHolyLandofLordEdward,laterEdwardIofEngland

1272–91

SmallexpeditionstoHolyLand

1282–1302

WarsoftheSicilianVespers;includeFrenchcrusadetoAragon(1285)

1289 FallofTripoliFallofAcretoal-

1291AshrafKhalilofEgyptandevacuationofmainlandOutremer

1306–1522

HospitallersruleislandofRhodes

1307–14

TrialandsuppressionofTemplars

14th

PapalcrusadesinItaly;crusadingcontinuesagainst

century hereticsinItaly;MoorsinSpain;pagansintheBaltic(to1410)

1309

PopularCrusade;TeutonicKnightsmoveheadquartersfromVenicetoPrussia

1320 SecondShepherds’Crusade

1330s NavalleaguesagainstTurksin

onward Aegean

1350sonward

OttomanTurksestablishedinBalkans;soonestablishoverlordshipoverByzantineemperors

1365–66

CrusadeofPeterofCyprus;Alexandriasacked(1365)

1366CrusadeofCountAmadeusofSavoy

toDardanelles

1383

CrusadeofBishopDespenserofNorwichagainstsupportersofPopeClementVIIinFlanders

1390ChristianexpeditiontoMahdiainTunisia

1396

ChristianexpeditionagainsttheOttomansdefeated

atNicopolisontheDanube(September)

15thcentury

NumeroussmallcrusadingforaysagainsttheOttomansineasternMediterraneanandeast/centralEurope

1420–71

CrusadesagainsttheHussitehereticsinBohemiaCrusadersdefeated

1444 atVarnainBulgaria(November)

1453FallofConstantinopletoOttomanTurksunderMehmedII

1456

BelgradesuccessfullydefendedfromOttomanTurkswithhelpofcrusadersunderJohnofCapistrano

1460–64

AbortivecrusadeofPopePiusII

1480 TurksbesiegeRhodes

1492GranadafallstoSpanishmonarchs

16thcentury

MorecrusadesagainstTurksinMediterraneanandcentralEurope;from1530scrusadesthreatenedagainst

heretics(Protestants)

1522 RhodesfallstoTurks

1525SecularizationofTeutonicOrderinPrussia

1529 TurksbesiegeVienna

1530–1798

HospitallersruleMaltaFrenchWarsof

1560s–90s

Religion;someCatholicsreceivecrusadeprivileges

1561–62

SecularizationofTeutonicOrderinLivonia

1565TurksfailtoconquerMalta

1571

HolyLeaguewinsanavalbattleagainsttheTurksatLepanto;CyprusfallstoTurks

1578

KingSebastianofPortugaldefeatedandkilledatAlcazaroncrusadeinMorocco

1588

SpanishArmadaattractscrusadeprivilegesforSpanish

1669 CretefallstoTurks

1683 TurksbesiegeViennaHolyLeaguebegins

1684–97

toreconquerBalkansfromTurks

1798HospitallerssurrenderMaltatoNapoleonBonaparte

1898

KaiserWilhelmIIofGermanyvisitsJerusalemandDamascus

1914–

FirstWorldWar;OttomanTurkeyallieswithGermany

18 whichencouragesproclamationofjihadagainsttheTurks’enemies

1917BritishunderGeneralAllenbytakeJerusalem

1919

VersaillesPeaceTreatynegotiationsconfirmmandatesforBritainandFranceinSyria,Palestine,Iraq,and

theLebanon

1948

CreationoftheStateofIsrael(defendedinwars1948,1967,1973)

1982 IsraeliinvasionofLebanon

1990 GulfWar

2001 Al-QaedaattackonUnitedStates

2003–04 IraqWar

PICTURECREDITS•

ASSOCIATED PRESS: 5: APPhoto/MassimoSambucetti.BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY: 135:Homage to King Philip II(1165–1223) from Simon deMontfort (c.1160–1218) forthe territories confiscatedfrom Raymond VI (1197–

1249) c.1216 (vellum) byFrench School (thirteenthcentury), Centre Historiquedes Archives Nationales,Paris, France/ArchivesCharmet/The Bridgeman ArtLibrary.CLIPART.COM:6.

CORBIS: 12: © The ArtArchive/Corbis; 18: © ChrisHellier/Corbis;110:©GianniDagli Orti/Corbis; 177: ©

SwimInk2,LLC/Corbis.GETTY IMAGES: ii: DEA/G.DagliOrti/GettyImages;106:Pietro Cavallini/TheBridgemanArt Library/GettyImages; 170: Sir JohnGilbert/The Bridgeman ArtLibrary/Getty Images; 180:The Bridgeman ArtLibrary/GettyImages.THE GRANGER COLLECTION, NEW

YORK:20;58;60.

COURTESY OF PRINTS &

PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, LIBRARY

OF CONGRESS: 14: LC-USZ62-58246; 44: LC-USZ62-120685; 47: LC-USZ62-36166; 89:LC-USZC4-2149;95: LC-USZ61-1435; 122:LC-USZ62-120684;125:LC-USZC4-2148; 131: LC-USZ62-55247; LC-USZ62-88830; 144: LC-USZC4-3484; 157t: LC-USZ61-252;166:LC-USZ62-114861.

COURTESY OF PROJECT

GUTENBERG: 11:Punch,or theLondon Charivari, Volume153,December19,1917.SHUTTERSTOCK: 36:©Shutterstock/Paul Cowan;53: ©Shutterstock/EduardCebria; 82:©Shutterstock/St.Nick; 86:©Shutterstock/Jozef Sedmak;101: ©Shutterstock/ErayHaciosmanoglu; 129:

©Shutterstock/StanislavBokach; 140:©Shutterstock/Joshua Haviv;157b:©Shutterstock/EliasH.Debbas II; 172:©Shutterstock/K-i-T.COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA

COMMONS: xii: PopeUrban/Author: Nelson Minar(http://flickr.com/photos/62218395@N004: Standbeeld SaladinDamascus/Author: GodfriedWarreyn; 7: Eugàne

Ferdinand Victor Delacroix047/Source: The YorckProject:10.000Meisterwerkeder Malerei. DVD-ROM,2002. ISBN 3936122202.Distributed byDIRECTMEDIA PublishingGmbH; 8: Harold bayeuxtapestry; 26: Baldwin ofBoulogne entering Edessa inFeb1098/Source:PaintingbyJ. Robert-Fleury, 1840, LesCroisades, origins et

consequences; 34:Hattin/Author:BibliothàqueNationaleFR.5594Fol.197,Sebastian Mamerot, LesPassages faitOutremer, vers1490; 39: Tomb InnocentiusIII SanGiovanni inLaterano2006-09-07/Author: Jastrow;51: MartoranaRogerII2008/Author:MatthiasSüßen;62:BattleofVarna 1444/Author: JanMatejko (1838–1893); 64:

Sultan HasanMosque2/Author:Effeietsanders; 70: MosqueCordoba/Author: TimorEspallargas; 72: CID-Balboa/Author: MichaelSeljos(http://www.flickr.com/people/99149846@N00from San Diego, California,USA; 76:SiegeOfAcre1291/Source:Chateau de Versailles,reproduced inBrieve histoire

des Ordres Religieux,Editions Fragile/Author: D.Papety (1815–1849); 78:Stained glass St BernardMNMA C13273/Source:Jastrow (2006), Muséenational du Moyen Age—Thermes de Hôtel de Cluny,Paris, France; 92: FraAngelico 031/Source: TheYorck Project: 10.000Meisterwerke der Malerei.DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN

3936122202; 96: PopeGregory viiillustration/Source:Weltgeschichte-EineChronik, ISBN3-88703-814-2/Upload to commons byRoterRabe 23:24, 19 July2006 (UTC); 104: BishopAbsalon topples the godSvantevit at Arkona/Source:www.hopegallery.com/php/detail.php?artwork=438/Artist: LauritsTuxen; 114:

RaymondOfPoitiersWelcomingLouisVIIinAntioch/Source:Passages d’Outremer, 14thcentury/Author: JeanColombe and SebastienMarmerot; 120: Saint Pierrel’Ermite Amiens190908/Author: Vassil; 122:139: Crécy jeanfroissard/Source: Chroniquesde Jean Froissard/Author:Copiste inconnu; 149: Siegeof Tripoli Painting(1289)/Source: Painting

reproduced as Plate #26 inChristopherTyerman’sGod’sWar. Credited as “BritishLibrary, London [Ms Add27695 Fol. 5]” (Tyerman, p.vii); 154: BaldwinII cedingthe Temple of Salomon toHugues de Payns andGaudefroy de Saint-Homer/Source: Histoired’Outre-Mer, Guillaume deTyr, thirteenth century,reproduced inLes Templiers,

Patrick Huchet, p.21, ISBN9782737338526; 156:Giovanni Battista Tiepolo-StJacobus in Budapest/Source:Budapest, Museum of FineArts; 162: BraunschweigBrunswick Heinrich derLoewe Heinrichsbrunnen(2005)/Author: Brunswyk;164: Siegel GrossmeisterDeutschritterorden/Source:Buch-ScanvonWolpertinger.