The Crusades and the Near East
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This wretched traitor [Alexios] informed the Turks by letters of his arrival, before the count had left the royal city. ‘Lo,’ he said, ‘the fattest 170
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sheep from France are moving in your direction, led by a foolish
shepherd.’ What more can I say? The count went beyond the borders of the tyrannical prince, suddenly before him stood an army of Turks, who scattered, preyed upon and conquered the disorganized foreigners.50
The following army, which contained Stephen of Blois, stayed at Constantinople where they were given generous gifts by Alexios and advised not to follow the route of the first expedition. Ignoring this warning, the crusaders insisted on keeping to the route of the First Crusade and asked the emperor to provide markets along the route. The emperor advised them to only bring forty days worth of supplies according to Guibert, pleased that they were bringing about their own destruction.51
The anonymous Gesta Francorum was particularly scathing of Alexios calling him ‘unjust’ ( iniquus), ‘most wicked’ ( nequissimus), ‘a fool as well as a knave’
( plenus uana et iniqua) and ‘wretched/miserable’ ( infelix).52 Guibert followed his source’s criticisms adding emphasis: Alexios is ‘this most wicked tyrant’ ( miseri imperatoris, sordidissimus ille tirannus), ‘treacherous’ ( perfidus), ‘impious’( impio) and ‘most wicked’ ( nequissimus).53 Despite being frightened of the crusade princes, he was ‘clever’ ( astutus) and ‘fraudulent/treacherous’ ( fraudulentusa).54 As well as his opposition to the crusade, Alexios had contributed to the ruin of his empire through poor rule. Paralleling the religious failures of the Eastern Christians, which Guibert claimed had brought about the degradation of the empire by Islam, Alexios’ degenerate rule rendered the empire unable to defend itself. Guibert attacked Alexios’ rule as illegitimate, since he was not emperor by hereditary right,
‘this emperor had received the purple not by legitimate succession’.55 He had obtained the throne through a rebellion against the Emperor Nicephorus III Botaniates.56 From the perspective of a monk and an abbot, defiance of legitimate authority was unforgivable, ‘without right, he usurped the right of imperial authority’.57 Once in power, wrote Guibert, Alexios had enacted two ‘well known’
edicts, one of which decreed that the younger daughters of large families should be given over to prostitution, part of the proceeds of which went to the emperor.
The other required younger sons of large families to be castrated, which rendered them militarily redundant and unable to defend the empire.58
Once Alexios had brought his empire to the edge of ruin through his own mismanagement, he asked for help from the West, ‘therefore he who had brought destruction upon himself was now compelled to seek help from foreigners’.59
‘Compelled by necessity’, he had sought for military aid. In the letter to Robert of Flanders, Alexios, unable to comprehend the higher spiritual ideals of the crusaders, offered them the beauty of Greek women and gifts of gold and silver.60
Ignorant of his own responsibility for the empire’s destruction, Alexios called for help from men wiser and more virtuous than him, but their arrival filled him with anxiety. In particular, his respectful treatment of Godfrey of Bouillon was borne of fear rather than any affection.61 Once Jerusalem was conquered by the Westerners, Alexios’ envy increased, as did his fear. 62
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There is no doubt that the anonymous Gesta Francorum, Guibert’s source, was hostile to the Byzantine emperor. In his Dei Gesta per Francos, however, Guibert expanded this animosity and extended it to the subjects of the emperor. The Eastern Christians were likened to heretics who had brought the Turkish invasions upon themselves through their disobedience. Their emperor had brought his empire so low that he was forced to ask for outside aid and when that aid came he rejected it out of fear and envy. Originally thought to have been an ally of the crusade, he quickly became hostile to it and even conspired with its opponents to bring about its destruction. Guibert’s criticisms of the Byzantines went far beyond those of his source and to assert that they were merely an embellishment of the criticisms of the Gesta Francorum rather than Guibert’s own opinions would be an error.63 It is therefore necessary to explore the roots of his hostility and try to determine if it was prompted by the events and outcome of the crusade.
The heavy emphasis on religion in Guibert’s attacks on the Byzantines initially suggests that he may have been influenced by papal attitudes, as they harness the principal points of contention between the two Churches: filioque, the Eucharist and clerical marriage. It is clear from the accounts of Pope Urban’s speech at Clermont in 1095, however, that the papacy had adopted a conciliatory tone towards the Church of Constantinople at this time. Most accounts of the speech reported that Urban had exhorted his audience to come to the defence of the Eastern Church, emphasising their common religion rather than their liturgical differences.64 Since the opening of his pontificate, Urban had worked for a rapprochement with Constantinople.65 It has even been suggested that Urban’s crusade plan was part of this conciliatory effort.66 Guibert’s complaints regarding the Eastern Christians were in line with the issues highlighted in the dispute of 1054 by Cardinal Humbert, but by the 1090s the papacy was pursuing a less aggressive policy towards Constantinople. While Guibert’s polemic drew upon the issues of contention between the two Churches, it is unlikely that this approach was inspired by the papacy of Urban II.
The tension between the crusaders and the Byzantines which arose almost as soon as the Latins arrived in imperial territory and the perceived failure of Alexios to support them caused many of those on the expedition to attack the Byzantines as enemies of the crusade. Immediately after the victory over Kerbogha at Antioch, Bohemond claimed the town on the basis that Alexios had broken his part of the oath sworn at Constantinople. As Prince of Antioch, Bohemond proved to be the most consistent enemy of the Byzantines after 1099, and in 1106 he used the forces he had gathered for a crusade to attack the emperor at Dyrrachium.
Bohemond’s opposition to Byzantium is apparent from an early stage. In the letter from the princes at Antioch to Urban II in 1098, a letter which Bohemond is likely to have inspired, the Greeks were labelled heretics.67 When travelling through France in 1106, ostensibly preaching a new crusade, Orderic Vitalis reported that Bohemond had verbally attacked the emperor. The Norman leader had brought with him a Byzantine noble who claimed that he was the heir to the emperor whom Alexios had ousted.68 Guibert was certainly aware of Bohemond’s 172
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visit to France as he mentioned the marriage between him and Constance, daughter of the King of France.69
Once Bohemond had gathered forces for this new crusade, he journeyed east.
Instead of travelling to the Near East, however, his forces turned aside to attack Alexios at Dyrrachium. This attack failed and Bohemond was forced to come to terms with Alexios through the Treaty of Devol.70 Bohemond wrote a letter to Pope Paschal II in either 1106 or 1108, in which he outlined his reasons for his enmity to the emperor and justified an attack on the Byzantine Empire.71 The emperor, Bohemond claimed, was a usurper who had violently risen up against his rightful lord and seized the imperial throne: ‘Let us be silent about how he, with bloodstained hands, through savage crimes and such fierce betrayal achieved that office [emperor] by ejecting his lord, as a result of which, he sits on a throne of plagues [ cathedra pestilentiae sedit].’72 It was Alexios’ fault that the empire’s Christians were dissenting from the Roman Church and Bohemond requested that the pope himself journey to the East, ‘for the removal of schisms, heresies and diverse traditions which exist in that church; of the procession of the Holy Spirit, of baptism, of the Eucharist and of marriage in ordained priests’.73 If the pope could not journey himself, Bohemond requested that a certain Iohannem Burgundon
iem, whose ability to confront heresy was well established, be sent as his legate.74
This letter gives us an insight into another possible influence on Guibert. Two of the additions made by Guibert to the criticisms inherent in the Gesta Francorum were his accusations of treachery against Alexios for having gained the imperial throne through rebellion rather than succession and the labelling of the Eastern Church as heretical for its differing traditions regarding the Trinity, the Eucharist and clerical marriage. If the increased availability of the Gesta Francorum at this time was due to a concerted effort on Bohemond’s part to damage the reputation of Alexios, it is likely that his verbal attacks on the emperor echoed those in the two letters of 1098 and 1106/8. The use of these arguments in particular by Guibert would suggest that he was exposed to this rhetoric during Bohemond’s journey to France in 1106 or that he had seen the letter to the pope. However, the tone of Bohemund’s letter is very much anti-Alexian rather than anti-Byzantine. Bohemond blamed Alexios for the distance between the two Churches:
‘he takes away from the universality of the universal and apostolic church, in as much as he is able, from which it is clear that he and his men dissent from the Roman Church’.75 The Eastern Christians in themselves were not the focus of the Norman prince’s attack, nor were they held responsible for the ‘heresies’ of their Church. Guibert’s focus on the deficiencies of the Eastern Christians as a group, and their moral flaws which led to the ‘heresies’ and consequently to the Islamic advances in imperial territory, is a development beyond the criticism found in the Gesta Francorum or in the sources for Bohemond’s ‘propaganda’.
The arguments used by Guibert against the Byzantines and their emperor reflect to a large extent the anonymous Gesta Francorum and the rhetoric of Bohemond of Taranto. However, neither of these sources applied their criticisms 173
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to the Eastern Christians as a group; presumably, in the case of Bohemond, because he was aware of papal policy in this regard. It is unclear whether Guibert was aware of the papacy’s desire for better relations with Eastern Christianity, but he was far more willing to blame the Eastern Christians collectively for their religious failings and to ascribe this to an ethnically based personality trait. The source of this ethnic bias was neither the writer of the Gesta Francorum nor Bohemond’s rhetoric.
Fulcher of Chartres
Anti-Byzantine sentiment was not unanimous, however, and those who read and used the anonymous chronicle were not bound by its opinions. Despite his incorporation of some of the material from the Gesta Francorum in his own work, Fulcher of Chartres’ Historia Hierosolymitana cannot be described as anti-Byzantine. In Fulcher’s history religious differences between the Eastern and Western Churches were ignored and those actions of Alexios that prompted an angry response from other chronicles were defended.
The only reliable biographical information available for Fulcher comes from the Historia itself.76 In 1123, he stated that he was almost sixty-five, while in 1125
he was sixty-six, giving him a year of birth of 1059.77 His name, Fulcherus Carnotensis, implies that Chartres was his place of birth; and in 1100, when he described being under attack near Beirut, he prayed to be in either Chartres or Orléans, implying that one of those cities was his home.78 Although he began the crusade in the contingent of Count Stephen of Blois, Robert of Flanders and Robert of Normandy, Fulcher quickly became associated with Baldwin of Boulogne, and he was Baldwin’s chaplain around the time that he became Lord of Edessa (10 March 1097).79 It was not until 1100, when Baldwin completed his pilgrimage, that Fulcher reached Jerusalem. In 1101, Godfrey of Bouillon died and Baldwin, as his heir, became King of Jerusalem. From this time Fulcher appears to have been permanently resident in the Holy City. For much of the crusade, therefore, Fulcher was absent from the main army, so he relied on the testimony of eyewitnesses and written sources to write his history.
The Historia Hierosolymitana was divided into three books: the first described the events of the First Crusade up to the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem; the second outlined the reign of Baldwin I; and the third described the reign of Baldwin II from his accession in 1118 until 1127. The first book was completed around 1105 and was circulated in the West.80 When the second and third books were completed, Fulcher revised parts of the first and added a prologue to the work.81
The Historia Hierosolymitana does not reflect the growing animosity towards the Byzantines which is evident in the other eyewitness chronicles of the First Crusade. This may be due, in part, to the relatively good relations between Alexios and the contingent in which Fulcher was travelling. Before the arrival of the northern French army at Constantinople, relations with the imperial forces had 174
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been uneventful. On their arrival in Constantinople, the leaders took the oath of loyalty to Alexios, apparently without protest. Stephen of Blois, in a letter to his wife Adele, reported that the emperor had treated them extremely well.82 Fulcher was extremely impressed by the beauty of the imperial city, writing: ‘what monasteries, what palaces are in her, wonderful fortifications, skilfully built . . .
[with] all the possessions and riches, gold of course, silver, multiformed cloths and holy relics’.83
According to Fulcher, the emperor had placed restrictions on the number of Western pilgrims entering the city at any one time, because ‘he feared that we would contrive some powerful injury to him’.84 The oath of loyalty which the princes had to swear to Alexios seemed reasonable to Fulcher: ‘it was essential that all establish friendship with the emperor since without his aid and counsel
[ auxilium et consilium] we could not easily make the journey, nor could those who were to follow us by the same route’.85
Although he could not omit to mention the harsh treatment of Hugh of Vermandois by the emperor, which had angered the anonymous author and Guibert, Fulcher’s choice of words for the situation downplayed any suggestion of conflict when he stated that Hugh had remained at Constantinople, ‘not entirely freely’.86
In order to emphasise the importance of the emperor’s material aid to the crusade, Fulcher noted that the gifts which he had provided made the journey possible: ‘Therefore this emperor offered to them [the princes] as much of his coins and silken cloths as he wished; and horse and money which they would need exceedingly to finally complete their journey.’87
In describing the siege of Nicaea, the emperor’s contribution was reiterated:
‘Let it be known that, as long as we besieged the city Nicaea, provisions were brought to us to be bought, by sea ships with permission of the emperor.’88 Once the city had surrendered to the emperor, Fulcher’s only observation was that it had been reduced by the ‘strength and ingenuity’ of the Latins.89 He did not pass comment on Alexios’ benevolent treatment of the defeated Turks, instead focusing on the emperor’s generosity in the aftermath of the siege: ‘Wherefore after all this money was seized the emperor ordered gifts to be presented to our leaders, gifts of gold and silver and raiment; and to the foot-soldiers he distributed copper coins which they call tartarones.’90
During the siege of Antioch and the subsequent besieging of the crusade by the forces of Kerbogha, the Christian army suffered under extremely difficult conditions. There were severe food shortages and illness was widespread. The Turkish garrison in Antioch was able to mount sorties and harass the crusade, while desertions among the Latin army increased. The departure of Tatikios, the Byzantine envoy, from the army and the news that Alexios had turned back at Philomelium convinced many that the Byzantines had deserted the crusade. In the letter from the princes to Urban II sent from Antioch, the first statements of anti-Byzantine sentiment appeared when a list of heresies included the Greeks.91
The departure of Tatikios was depicted by the anonymous author, Raymond of 175
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Agui
lers, Albert of Aachen, Guibert of Nogent and Baldric of Dol as an outright betrayal.92 Given the deteriorating relations between the crusaders and the Byzantines at this time and Fulcher’s use of the Gesta Francorum for this portion of his work, one would expect a change in his tone towards the Byzantines, or at least a criticism of Tatikios. However, Fulcher makes no mention of the incident and does not refer to the Byzantine envoy at all in his narrative. The desertion of Stephen of Blois and his subsequent meeting with Alexios, which Guibert interpreted as the emperor’s treacherous abandonment of the crusade, were also avoided entirely by Fulcher when he reported that Stephen left by sea and made no mention of the meeting with Alexios. When Fulcher recorded the death of Alexios in 1118, he listed him among the ‘leading men in the world’: For in succession died Pope Paschal in the month of January, Baldwin, King of Jerusalem in the month of March, and also his wife in Sicily whom he had forsaken, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Arnulf, and also the Constantinopolitan emperor, Alexios, and how many other leading men
in the world.93
There is one exception to Fulcher’s generally positive treatment of the Byzantine emperor. When reporting the battle between Bohemond and Alexios at
Dyrrachium in 1106, Fulcher criticised the emperor: ‘there was an emperor of Constantinople, Alexios by name, extremely hostile to our people, a disturber of those making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem – through secret deception or open violence, either by land or by sea – and a tyrant’.94 This criticism is unique in the Historia and it is not clear why it should differ so much from Fulcher’s prevailing tone of conciliation. Apart from this single criticism, the Historia Hierosolymitana is consistent in its attitude towards the emperor, portraying him as an ally of the crusade and omitting any episodes that contradicted this image.
While Guibert of Nogent claimed the Eastern Christians were heretics by virtue of the differences between them and the Latins, Fulcher presented them as brothers in faith. When relating Urban’s speech at Clermont, Fulcher had the pope describe them as ‘your brothers dwelling in eastern parts’, ‘worshippers of Christ’,