The World of the Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  22. Peter giving out crosses.

  Preparation

  Receiving the cross formed part of a process of engagement driven by material as well as emotional and religious forces. No recruit could hope to par-ticipate without material assets, his or her own or someone else’s. The offer of church protection probably agreed at Clermont assumed crusaders possessed property.18 Lords subsidised their entourages and relatives. Poorer crusaders without such material support had to abandon their journey. The staggered times of departure in 1096 depended on the harvest, raising money from property deals or recruits finding a paymaster. Accounts of the crusade note the large-scale involvement of what were frequently, at times derisively, termed ‘the poor’ (pauperes). Leaving aside the moral heft of the ‘poor in spirit’ (Matthew 5:3), the ‘poor’ on crusade were defined in comparative terms, not necessarily indigent but non-rich, subsidised by others. Such numbers grew proportionately as the campaign drained recruits’ assets, necessitating the creation of common funds to bail them out.19 Economic and financial constraints provided the frame for the expression of religious enthusiasm through emotional triggers of anxiety (fear of sin, hell, or bogeymen infidel), hope (salvation, virtuous conduct, self-improvement, enhanced status), revenge (for Christian and by analogy Christ’s suffering) and reward (remission of penalties of sin, privileged legal protection, employment) that sought physical resolution through the military campaign. The crusade was always about more than a supposed existential Turkish threat. In records of their fund-raising transactions, departing crusaders were depicted as desiring escape from the burden of sin through the penance of the crusade. However, the Clermont decree implied that, given righteous intent, spiritual and material ambitions did not contradict one another. One eyewitness later described Urban offering knightly recruits self-respect, fame and a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’ (Exodus 3:8). Another had the pope promising crusaders the possessions of their defeated enemies, the usual accompaniments of successful warfare.20 A famous crusader battle cry held out the prospect of ‘all riches’ (divites) as a reward for steadfastness in faith and victory in battle.21 The ambiguity of spiritual and material gain was inherent.

  Recruitment spread unevenly but extensively: in France, the Limousin, Poitou, the Loire valley, Maine, Chartrain, Ile de France, Normandy, Burgundy, Languedoc and Provence; in Italy, Lombardy, the Norman south and the ports of Liguria and Tuscany; in Germany, the Rhineland and western provinces. Enthusiasm is recorded from Catalonia. There is limited evidence of participants from Denmark and England. However, the English paid a land tax levied by King William II (1087–1100) to raise 10,000 marks for mortgaging the duchy of Normandy to subsidise his brother Duke Robert’s expedition. Everywhere, the lead was given by what a Genoese observer called the ‘better sort’ (meliores): lords, abbots, members of mercantile urban elites.22 Participation relied on existing networks of lordship, kinship, clientage, shared locality, commerce and employment, and therefore centred on aristocratic, ecclesiastical or commercial communities, families and courts with their immediate dependants – relatives, tenants, military households, client clergy, servants. The Church furthered international contacts through its increasingly cosmopolitan episcopates and monastic orders. Towns and cities provided focal points for recruitment and muster, news and recruitment passing along trading networks. Crusading traditions quickly became established in market centres such as Limoges, Poitiers, Tours, Chartres, Paris, Troyes, Lille, Cologne, Milan and Genoa. The high nobility operated internationally through extensive dynastic connections across regional frontiers.23

  The total number of those who left for the east is unknowable. Some estimates put the figure as high as 70,000–80,000 recruited during the year after Clermont.24 A regular stream of reinforcements in smaller groups joined them during the three-year campaign, by land but also by sea, chiefly on Italian fleets from Genoa, Lucca and Pisa. Many who took the cross thought better of it, could not find a patron or failed to raise adequate funds, without which, it was later observed, participation was impossible.25 The impression given by crusaders’ surviving property grants – sales or various forms of mortgage chiefly to monasteries, in return for cash, materiel or pack animals – is of free-standing, independent, knightly or noble recruits incurring considerable capital loss, many times annual landed income. However, these records are those of the leaders not the led, the paymasters not the paid. Most of those who went with the First Crusade at some stage, some at every stage, received payment in kind or cash, sometimes disguised as gifts, much of it in addition to basic survival rations. Lords paid their retinues and got their clerks to keep written accounts. On the march, payment could attract new followers and create fresh allegiances, a process fully exploited by ambitious junior commanders such as Bohemund’s nephew Tancred of Lecce. Crusaders took considerable quantities of silver bullion with them in coin and ingots; a Burgundian knight received 2,000 shillings on just one land deal with the abbey of Cluny; Godfrey of Bouillon extorted 1,000 silver pieces from the Jews of Cologne and Mainz as well as raising 1,300 silver marks from selling his estate at Bouillon.26 Affluent crusaders took negotiable wealth with them: jewels, plate or luxury textiles. Although very little gold was available until the crusaders reached the eastern Mediterranean, most leaders took some if they could. On campaign, the crusaders’ resources were regularly replenished: by gifts, bribes and payment from the Greeks; tribute and protection money from cowed opponents; and booty from victories and conquests. The scramble for supplies, subsidies for poorer crusaders, arguments over exchange rates, and the creation of central communal funds witnessed the material imperatives.

  Not all fund-raising was loss. Mortgages and ecclesiastical protection de facto recognised a crusader’s title to property. The pious motives attributed to crusaders in some of the charters recording such financial transactions may have been genuine, or the gloss of the clerical scribe, or simply technical formulae indicating gifts rather than sales or mortgages.27 Nevertheless, the availability of the necessary moveable wealth is striking, especially given the series of very poor harvests before the bumper crop of 1096, and the late eleventh-century western European dearth of silver. Even with the unlocked bullion assets of monasteries, the apparent surplus of liquid capital indicates developing monetisation in commerce and artisan trades. Wealth was no longer confined to ecclesiastical corporations, successful merchants and landed aristocrats. The head chef of Count Stephen of Blois, Hardouin Desredatus, possessed vineyards, land and houses that he assigned to the abbey of Marmoutier before setting off east. The abbey, near Tours in the Loire valley, played an active role in seeking such deals, monks and abbot openly touting for trade in what they clearly saw as a profitable business as well as spiritual opportunity.28

  As the armies lumbered east from the early spring to late autumn of 1096, led by expanded retinues of great nobles, lesser lords and wealthy knights, the pattern of mutually sought-after lordship, secured by wages, gifts, subsistence, service and shared booty, provided the glue that held together the crusade. New subsidised units formed following a lord’s death, impoverishment or another’s success. Groups from the same area and across the social spectrum could travel together, mess together and pool resources. All recruits would have been used to acting and making decisions as a community. Alongside hierarchical lordship, much of society operated communally, from crop planting to law courts. On the crusade itself, the non-noble elements, characterised as the populus, periodically acted in concert to influence the decisions of the leaders who regularly consulted them. Besides the non-combatant support staff necessary to any armed force – cooks, farriers, carpenters, blacksmiths, writing clerks, valets, priests, prostitutes, laundresses and others – the First Crusade armies attracted non-fighting pilgrims seeking military protection. Some apparently set out with their belongings, intent on settling near the Holy Places. If so, hope proved a mirage or a nightmare. Non-combatants and the less well-off tended to be the first and heaviest
casualties from disease, hunger and exhaustion: accounts of their privations and losses make harrowing reading. The genuinely poor could not go on crusade with much prospect of progress let alone survival.

  The Campaign to Syria, 1096–7

  The campaign of the First Crusade fell into four stages. The first saw the western forces converge on Constantinople in the autumn, winter and spring of 1096–7. In the second stage, over the six months from June 1097, the crusaders, acting in collaboration with the Byzantines, captured Nicaea in western Asia Minor, forced a passage across Anatolia, annexed Cilicia and besieged Antioch in northern Syria. During the third stage, in 1098, the crusaders emancipated themselves from the Greek alliance as they took Edessa, Antioch and its surrounding regions for themselves. The final act, beginning in January 1099, saw most of a much reduced crusade army march south into Palestine where, on 15 July 1099, Jerusalem fell after a month’s siege, a triumph secured by victory over a Fatimid relief army at Ascalon in August. The majority of survivors then returned home leaving meagre garrisons in Jerusalem, Antioch and Edessa.

  Two main routes to Constantinople were used. One went south-east from the Rhineland to follow the Danube to Belgrade before striking south-east across the Balkan peninsula to the Byzantine capital. This was used by forces that passed through or originated in western Germany, such as the armies of Peter the Hermit, some German counts, and two substantial contingents raised by two German priests, Gottschalk and Volkmar, which were destroyed in Hungary during June and July 1096 after provoking disturbances over supplies and markets. The surviving armies, including Peter the Hermit’s, passed down the Danube from the early spring of 1096 onwards. Some months later, they were followed more peacefully by Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, and his Lorrainers. The second route east led to the ports of Apulia in southern Italy and the short sea crossing to the Albanian coast and the old Via Egnatia across the Balkan peninsula to the Byzantine capital. This was used by the armies from northern France led by Hugh of Vermandois, brother of Philip I of France, Robert of Normandy, and the counts Eustace III of Boulogne, Robert II of Flanders and Stephen of Blois, as well as by southern Italian Norman troops under Bohemund of Taranto. The Lombards who reached Constantinople by August 1096 plausibly also travelled the Apulia–-Albania–-Via Egnatia route. These routes were familiar from trade and pilgrim traffic. Exceptionally, Raymond of Toulouse’s large force, accompanied by the legate Adhemar of Le Puy, marched from Provence through Lombardy, around the head of the Adriatic and down the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic before picking up the Via Egnatia, a longer journey that crossed difficult terrain where the Provençal troops encountered local hostility. It has been suggested that Raymond’s Dalmatian itinerary had been planned with Alexius I to discipline a rebellious Serb leader, Constantine Bodin.29 While evidence for this is circumstantial, general Byzantine-papal-crusader cooperation may be assumed, not least in the provision of supplies and markets in Greek territory and the well-framed diplomatic preparations that greeted the crusaders when they reached Constantinople.

  3. Crusade attacks on Jews, 1096–1146.

  One unplanned consequence of the mass recruitment saw lethal attacks on Jewish communities of the Rhineland in May, June and July 1096, initially orchestrated in Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Cologne by troops under Count Emich of Flonheim. Feeding off local economic and social tensions, the violence was fuelled by the aggressive Christ-centred crusade rhetoric of victimhood, resentment and revenge. Although no part of official policy, these anti-Jewish atrocities exposed a fissile intolerance inherent in the crusade’s ideology (see ‘Jews and the Crusade’, p. 80).30

  The second stage of the crusade saw the western forces operating as Emperor Alexius’s mercenaries, hired confederates of the Byzantine state. On reaching Constantinople, crusade commanders swore personal oaths to the emperor, receiving lavish gifts of gold, silver, jewels, cloaks, textiles, food, horses and military equipment in return. In the crusaders’ own testimony, desire and expectation of material reward are palpable. Certain objects conveyed more than aesthetic or financial value. Tancred of Lecce, Bohemund’s ambitious nephew, asked – unavailingly – for Alexius I’s enormous imperial tent ‘marvellous both by art and by nature . . . it looked like a city with turreted atrium [and] required 20 heavily burdened camels to carry’. Despite its highly inconvenient bulk, Tancred intended the tent as a meeting place for his growing band of clients and followers. Just as money allowed the great to attract support, so Tancred’s hoped-for tent would have elevated his status. Display formed a crucial aspect of lordship, on crusade as at home. The luxury that attended rich crusaders on campaign played a social and political role beyond private gratification.31 Alexius, who similarly used conspicuous wealth to politically dazzle and impress, understood this. He was paying on a number of levels for specific military aid.

  The initial object was the recapture of Nicaea, within striking distance of Constantinople, held by the Seljuks since 1081. Earlier western recruits had been stationed nearby, as had been the forces led by Peter the Hermit until their near annihilation by the Turks in September 1096. Alexius’s wider strategy included challenging Turkish power in Anatolia, Cilicia, Armenia and northern Syria, with Antioch fixed as a target. Using the crusaders on his eastern flank left Alexius freer to combat Turkish threats in the Aegean. In addition to money and supplies, he provided strategic advice, regional contacts, for example with Armenian émigrés, and diplomatic intelligence, including putting the crusaders in touch with the Fatimids of Egypt. Direct Byzantine military cooperation was provided at the siege of Nicaea and a Byzantine regiment accompanied the march across Anatolia to Antioch to protect Alexius’s interests and receive the surrender of captured cities. As one veteran noted, the crusaders needed Alexius as much as he needed them: ‘without his aid and counsel we could not easily make the journey’.33

  JEWS AND THE CRUSADE

  Although no crusade was launched against the Jews of western Europe, their communities were profoundly affected: directly from crusaders’ physical attacks and financial extortion; and indirectly by increasingly overt anti-Semitic prejudice and discrimination arising from the development of a culture of aggressive Christian piety and religious xenophobia that crusading reflected and stimulated. Both lay and ecclesiastical Christian authorities were conflicted. Secular rulers generally welcomed Jewish commercial and financial activity as sources of revenue, which encouraged them simultaneously to protect and exploit Jews within their jurisdictions. Jews’ urban trades, businesses and access to liquid capital made them attractive as both protégés and milch cows. As rich corporations, churches and monasteries similarly took advantage of Jewish finance. At the same time, official church teaching created a contradictory tension. On the one hand, Jews were depicted in the liturgy and elsewhere as responsible for the Crucifixion and obstinately blind to the Christian revelation: in short, enemies of Christ. On the other, the Book of Revelation describes how the final conversion of the Jews will mark a stage in the Apocalypse and the fulfilment of God’s providential scheme and therefore implictly demands protected status for Jews. The crusades initially sharpened these contradictions before contributing to the spread of a climate of cultural uniformity and religious intolerance in which Jews found themselves increasingly exploited, marginalised, ghettoised and excluded.

  Jewish communities spread from the Mediterranean into northern Europe from the tenth century, becoming established in some numbers in market towns and cities across parts of France and western Germany, increasingly prosperous regions later, not coincidentally, significant as centres of crusade recruitment. Attacks on these communities did not start with the crusades, reports of the Egyptian caliph al-Hakim’s destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 provoking anti-Jewish violence in France. However, the concerted atrocities inflicted on Jewish communities in the Rhineland and northern France in 1096 during the early stages of the First Crusade appeared of a different order and set a new pattern for p
ersecution that revolved around money, faith and civil protection. From May until July various Franco-German contingents of crusaders wrought havoc in Jewish communities the length of the Rhineland and elsewhere in northern France. From both Christian and Jewish sources, their motives appeared both material and religious. The desire to seize Jewish cash to pay for crusade expenses was widely shared; Godfrey of Bouillon extracted 1,000 marks from the Jews of Cologne and Mainz, later victims of the depredations of the followers of Count Emich of Flonheim, who committed a series of the worst outrages. The desire for money was nonetheless closely allied to a declared collective sense of vengeance on enemies of the cross. While religious claims may have acted as a cover for violent mercenary grand larceny, it appeared to some victims as a potent ideological inspiration, supported by the many instances of enforced conversion. Such excesses may have aided corporate bonding among the crusaders, a source of identity and the first action of the campaign. It also signalled a failure and collapse of political control by church and secular authorities: in attacking the Jews, Count Emich was clearly defying the authority of Emperor Henry IV as well as the local prince-bishops.

  23. Tombstone of a Jewish victim of crusader violence, Mainz, 1146.

  This combination of material greed, sincere or feigned enthusiastic religious hostility, and the limits of establishment protection was displayed again during the Second Crusade, when, among other outbreaks of persecution, a charismatic Cistercian preacher Radulph whipped up anti-Jewish violence again in the Rhineland in 1146; and in England during the early stages of the Third Crusade in 1189–90, attacks that culminated in the massacre and mass suicide of Jews at York in March 1190. The authorities’ loss of control on these occasions contrasts sharply with the effective public protection afforded the Jews of Mainz by Frederick Barbarossa in 1188. However, the dangers for Jewish communities were not confined to sporadic explosions of violent hostility but embraced a gradual erosion of social tolerance, while whatever wealth they possessed was never immune from peaceful sequestration. Although successive popes from Eugenius III’s 1145–6 crusade bull onwards had outlawed direct involvement of Jewish credit in funding crusades, as this risked siphoning crusaders’ money to Jews, secular rulers felt free to extort money directly for their crusades, a move advocated by influential clerical anti-Semites such as Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny (d. 1156). In England, Jews were tallaged (a form of arbitrary royal expropriation) for crusades in 1188, 1190, 1237, 1251 and 1269–70. In 1245 the First Council of Lyons directed that all Jewish profits from interest be confiscated for the crusade. In 1248–9, to help pay for his crusade, Louis IX of France, a notoriously devout anti-Semite, expelled Jewish money-lenders and seized their assets.