The Crusades: New Millennium, Knighthood, and Militant Christianity

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What is a Crusade?

OED: modern French croisade (= Old French croisee ), Provençal crozada , Spanish cruzada , Italian crociata , medieval Latin cruciata (cruzata ), being in the various languages the feminine noun of action formed on past participle of cruciāre , crociare , cruzar , croiser to cross v., lit. a being crossed, a crossing or marking with the cross, a taking the cross: compare the early French croisement . The earliest and only Middle English equivalents were croiserie n. (13th–15th cent.), and croisee n. (15–17th cent.), from the corresponding Old French words. In 16th cent. French, croisée was displaced by croisade , with the new ending -ade suffix, adapted from the -ada of Provençal and Spanish. This croisade appeared in English c1575, and continued to be the leading form till c1760 (see Johnson's Dict.). …

a. Hist. A military expedition undertaken by the Christians of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.

b. transf. Any war instigated and blessed by the Church for alleged religious ends, a ‘holy war’; applied esp. to expeditions undertaken under papal sanction against infidels or heretics.

The ‘Crusades’ or ‘Crusades’?

A military expedition undertaken by the Christians of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims

Nine Crusades…

Any war instigated and blessed by the Church for alleged religious ends, a ‘holy war’

Reconquista – war against Muslim states in the Iberian Peninsula

Baltic ‘Crusades’ or forced conversion of 12th century

Albigensian ‘Crusade’ against heretics in southern France 12th-13th Century

Crusades as a Cultural Phenomenon

Crusades a ‘logical’ manifestation of Christian feudal society?

Militant Pilgrimage?

Militant Conversion?

‘Form’ of ‘migration’? Conquest?

Papal and Ecclesiastical power?

Papal monarchy?

Religious zeal?

The ‘Just’ War?

What are long-term outcomes of Crusades?

Cultural Diversity

Oppression

Intellectual Life

Initial Causes for the Crusades?

Seljuk Turks take Anatolia, Syria, Palestine by 1070s

Conquers Jerusalem 1071

Battle of Manzikert

Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos asks Pope for help in defending Anatolia, 1095

Objectives

Free the Holy Lands from infidels

Protect Pilgrims

Baldric of Dol “the estates given for the support of [pilgrims] ... and for the sustenance of the poor are subject to pagain tyranny”

Longer-term causes?

Sociological & Economic?….

Famine

Between 970 and 1040 forty-eight famine years

1080-1095 even worse

“Second sons” – land inheritance?

Land as wealth

Wealth

Loot & Trade?

Longer-term causes?

Condemnation of Violence in Europe – the Peace of God movement is successful (1040-1)

Monasticism and Asceticism = spiritual ideals?

Christian Knighthood?

Papal Sanctioned conquest & Reform stir up religious zeal?

Continuation of “norse” expansion, but this time it’s Christian?

1060 -1090 the Normans of southern Italy conquer Sicily from the Muslims

Reconquista begins in the Iberian Peninsula, Ferdinand I of Castile (1028-1065) & el Cid (1040?-1099)

Pope Alex II gives blessing to Norman conquests of England, 1066, and Sicily, 1068-1072

Urban II’s Speech at Clermont 1095

Provides hints of these other causes

Urges warriors to take warfare outside Europe

“either lay down the girdle of such knighthood, or advance boldly as knights of Christ”

“you may deem it a beautiful thing to die for Christ in that city in which he died for us”

“it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens. It is the only war that is righteous, for it is charity to risk your life for your brothers”

Crusade as Spiritually ‘Good Work’

forgiveness of sins to all

eternal life to those who should fall in the enterprise

Urban II’s Speech at Clermont 1095

5 accounts of Urban’s speech

emphasis on atrocities against Christians

significance of Jerusalem

ignorance of Islam

use of Old Testament analogies (and millenarian prophecy)

martyrdom: soldiers of Christ

Holy Land Crusades 1096-1272

First Crusade 1096-99 Godfrey de Boullion, Hugh of Vermandois and

Robert of Normandy lead northern feudal army

Count Raimond of Toulouse southern

Meet at Constantinople 1096-7

Summer 1097 march through Asia Minor

Peter the Hermit leads militant pilgrimage alongside armies

Massacred

Conquer Antioch (1098) and Jerusalem (1099)

Inhabitants of Jerusalem slaughtered

Establishment of Crusader kingdom (Outremer)

Godfrey’s brother, Baldwin I king of Jerusalem 1100-1118

Militant Monks

Orders of Monastic knights founded to protect Holy Lands & Pilgrims

Hugo de Payens in 1119 founds order based near site of the Temple – Templars

Bernard of Clairvaux writes in support of the idea

Papal approval 1128

Hospitallers or Knights of St. John

Raymond du Puy, transforms existing Order attached to Hospital founded by Charlemagne in Jerusalem – militant, but still serves sick

Teutonic Order - Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem

Founded in 1190, in Holy Land, but main importance would be in Northern Europe

More Crusades

1145-1149: Second crusade

After fall of Edessa, preached by Bernard of Clairvaux – dramatic failure

1188-1192: Third crusade

Jerusalem recaptured by Saladin in 1187 – Three Kings launch crusade: Frederick Barbarossa (Emperor), Philip II (Augustus) of France, and Richard I (Lionheart) of England

Recaptures Acre – fails to retake Jerusalem

1198-1204: Fourth crusade

Sack of Constantinople by Crusaders 1204

1213-1229: Fifth crusade

Emperor Frederick II Regains Jerusalem by treaty until 1244.

1291: Final fall of “Outremer” colonies

Talk of new crusades for c. 2 more centuries!

The Fourth Crusade Called by Innocent III in 1198

Fails to raise enough money – conflict with Venetians (who failed to provide the transportation)

Conquer Zara in Hungary

Innocent excommunicates crusaders

Ends up in Constantinople – conquers & sacks Constantinople 1204

Feudal Latin Empire 1204-1261; Venetian republic gets trading rights

Byzantine Empire in Exile

Sack of Constantinople

Theft and destruction of Churches & Monasteries – crusaders seek relics and wealth as payment

Children’s “Crusade” - 1212

preached in France by a peasant boy Stephen of Cloyes

Stephen believes sea will part allowing them to walk to holy land

At Marseilles, children board 7 ships – never seen again ...?

Priests hear stories – 2 ships sink, the others captured by pirates and children sold into slavery in Algeria

In the Empire Nicholas from Cologne starts a movement after hearing of Stephen’s

20,000 Children and Young Adults; cross alps, many die

Arrive in Rome, pope tells them to go home, many die on the way back

Some get on ships in Pisa and disappear....

Outremer First example of Western

European colonization?

Profoundly unstable

Economically & Politically

Feudal cultures in Palestine

Krak des Chevaliers

Reconquista

Reclaim (reconquer!) lands in Iberia lost to Islam in 711

Caliph driven out in 1031 – Christian Kings in north seize the moment

Not complete until 1492 with fall of Granada (south)

Constant internal tension between Christian states

Intermarriage; contest for lands; imperial or royal titles – who is the ‘Emperor’ or King of Spain?

Relations with Muslim rulers not always straightforward, especially for lesser nobility

Christian knight - El Cid fights for muslim ruler of Zaragoza

What should be done with Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of reconquered lands

Moriscos & Conversos – initial tolerance; grows over next 5 centuries into intolerance and expulsion

Reconquista

Alfonso VI of Castile seizes Toledo 1085

Establishes permanent ascendancy of Christian reconquista kingdom Castile over rival Leon

Almoravides 1086

Invited by Muslim rule of Seville, al-Mu’tamid

Period of Muslim fanaticism to rival Palestine Crusaders in religious zeal

Alfonso I of Aragon & Navarre

Uses battle-hardened Crusaders from east; uses and founds military order of Belchite in 1122

Almohades 1146

Jihad used to describe the conflict with Christians

Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa 1212

Anchors Christian power; quick moves to push muslims out over 1210s-1240s

Treaty of Almizra 1244 – Aragon & Castile agree on spheres of influence

By 1276 political geography of Iberian peninsula stabilized until Fall of Granada

Reconquista

Baltic Crusades Northern European Christian rulers decide to subdue the non-Christian peoples

of the Balkans

Lasts for 300 years or so

Wendish Crusade – 1147 – destruction or conversion

Golden Bull of Rimini – 1226 – Emperor Frederick II confirms Teutonic governance of Baltic territories

Motivations :

Lords sought new estates; peasants wanted land and an escape from the manorial system; Christian missionaries wanted converts; and merchants wanted new areas to trade

Results:

1000s of Germans moved into the Baltic region and established towns and brought new land under cultivation.

German language and culture and the Christian religion with them

protecting them were military orders like the Teutonic Knights

Livonians – Estonians - Lithuania

Baltic Crusades

Teutonic Order – a Monastic State 1147 Pope grants rights of

expansion

New Theocratic State

Linked to economics – Hanseatic league, german urbanization

Colonization?

Exists until 1525

Albigensian Crusade

Alexander III in 1181 calls for crusade against growth of Christian heresy in southern France

Cathars or ‘Albigensians’ – Dualist , ascetic

Innocent III renews calls in 1208 after Papal Legate is murdered

Missionary work to reconvert fails – Crusade called

Sanctioned by French Crown

twenty years 1209-1229

Subjection of Southern Nobles & Cities

Synod of Toulouse in 1229

Forbids lay possession of the Bible in southern France

Denounces vernacular translation of scripture

Albigensian Crusade

Militant Christianity? Fuelled by feudal structures and culture, and fervent

religiosity create a militant (fanatic?!) Christianity

Violence reconfigured as moral action

Lauding / glorification of violence and the violent as honourable or ‘manly’

Unified perception of Christianity / Christendom is exclusive – European

Forced conversions really conversions?

Reduction in religious and cultural diversity in Europe

Persecution & Expulsion of the Jews concurrent with Crusades

Rhineland pogroms in 1096 against Jews

1182 Expelled from France, 1198, recalled; 1290 expelled from England

Muslims pushed out of Iberia, Sicily and Southern Italy

Heretics persecuted; non-Christians forcibly converted in Baltics

To be ‘European’ is to be Latin Christian

The New Knighthood – Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard of Clairvaux

Proclaims new concept of knighthood - bound up with the monastic ideal in Liber ad milites Templi: De laude novae militae (In Praise of the New Knighthood)

New Knights trouble the princes of darkness, wipes out his followers, the children of disbelief

twofold war both against flesh and blood and against a spiritual army of evil

Fights for a good reason, the issue of his fight can never be evil

Orders of Knights to live by rule, in the shadow of the Temple in Jerusalem

Discipline and godliness

“The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good.”

El Cid – The Knight

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar

Born c. 1043, minor Castilian nobility

Entourage of Sancho II; exiled by Sancho’s brother, Alfonso VI

Career in eastern Iberia, often in pay of Muslim ruler of Zaragoza

From 1089 and death in 1099, free agent in Valencia

c. 1207 ‘The Poem of the Cid’

Frontier lifestyle of Spanish nobility

Raids and conflict

A ‘Just’ War?

Augustine of Hippo

Righteous to suppress unbelief in order to protect true belief

Violence should only be used as last resort, but can be used in defense

Christian political theory means good governance might require violence in order to suppress wickedness

By 1000

Violence can be employed on behalf of Christ to further his intentions for humankind in general; even ‘authorized’ by him

Morally it is neutral; transgressions or ethics derive from the actions of the perpetrators, not the call to spread the Christian message

Isidore of Seville

“Waged on authority to recover property or to drive off enemies”

Bernard of Clairvaux

Requires divine sanction and right intention on part of aggressors

Theologians discuss it as a result of Crusades

Peter Lombard’s Sentences

Gratians Decretum (c.1140) – discusses military use of force and its moral / ethical dimensions

Focus on perpetrators and cause in 12th century analyses in Italy

Stephen Langton – can a knight question the justness of a war declared by his ruler or prince?

Views of the Crusades – European

Bernard of Clairvaux’s New Knighthood

Destruction or conversion

Righteousness of Christianity

Prior to 13th Century forced conversions prohibited by Canon Law – this changes with Reconquista and Baltic Crusades

Bringing ‘civilization’ to Baltics? Christianization to Spain & Baltics?

Different motives than the Holy Land?

Views of the Crusades - Muslims

Ibn Al-althir 1160-1233

(born in present SE Turkey; career in today’s Iraq and Syria)

The Complete History, c. 1231

account of the 1st Crusade

Christians ‘Franks’

Barbarians – slaughter christians too

Sweaty, slow, uncultured

Wild Beasts from the West?

Intolerant

Greedy

Impact of the Crusades – Byzantine Empire

Severely weakens the Byzantine Empire, especially the 4th crusade

Energy devoted to reconquering empire comes at expense of defence against Sultanate of Rum

Impact of the Crusades – Economic

Rise of Venice as trading power in Eastern Mediterranean

Becomes southern terminus of land trade routes in and out of Europe

Movement of luxury goods from Outremer to Europe

European awareness of luxuries not seen for centuries – Silks, Spices

Impact of the Crusades – Intellectual & Cultural

Contact with Islamic & Greek Scholarship reinvigorates and profoundly alters European intellectual culture

Astrology

Mathematics – Arabic Numerals

Natural Philosophy – ‘proto science’; Optics & Vision

Medicine

Cultural Imagination & Story Telling

Chivalry & Christian Knighthood; Epic; Travel & Pilgrimage

Legends & Chronicles of the Crusades

Chess!

Outcomes of the Crusades

Damage to Muslim-Christian relations

European identity as ‘Christendom’

Damage to Byzantine-Latin relations

sack of Constantinople by Crusaders, 1204

First Western European colonial experiments

Rise of Venice as trading power in East

Continuing decline of Byzantine empire

Commodities, words, ideas brought back

Take Away

Crusades a complex combination of religious beliefs and feudal culture

Builds on an internal rationalization of religious violence as justifiable and worth expression of Godliness

Ideals mix with economic and cultural pressures

Cultural Phenomenon, not just individual ‘events’

Holy Land

Reconquista

Baltic

Helps further ideas of Christian knighthood

Bernard of Clairvaux’s New Knighthood is monasticism + feudal warrior

First instances of European Colonization

Bernard of Clairvaux

Teutonic Order

1204

Ibn Al-althir

Reconquista

El Cid

Just War

Godfrey de Boullion

Terms