The Age of Chivalry

by Hywel Williams

  The first of the crusader states had therefore been established, but by now the main body of the crusading force was facing the immense challenge of Antioch—a city that had been heavily fortified by the Byzantines for centuries and whose walls were guarded by the Turks after its occupation in 1085. During the eight-month siege that started in October 1097 the crusaders defeated two major expeditionary forces sent by the princes of Damascus and Aleppo to relieve the city’s defenders. When Antioch fell in June 1098 a bloody massacre of its inhabitants followed. Internal rivalries within the Seljuk army that arrived shortly afterward to besiege the city led to another major Christian victory.

  The crusade’s military commanders continued to quarrel, however, and Adhemar’s death in August deprived the expedition of a significant spiritual leader and shrewdly political counselor. Bohemond now contended that Alexius had deserted the crusade and that the oaths sworn to the Greek emperor were therefore invalid. Raymond of Toulouse was among those who objected to Bohemond’s territorial claim to the defeated city, and the crusade came to a halt in the remaining months of 1098. Both pilgrims and knights became increasingly resentful at the delay, and it became critical for the dispute to be resolved. The resolution came early in 1099; as the expedition resumed its march to the south and toward Jerusalem, Bohemond was left behind in possession of Antioch as its prince.

  ABOVE An illustrated poem “Estoire d’Outremer” by William of Tyre (c.1130–c.1185) depicting the Siege of Antioch, which began in October 1097.

  It was a ragged, fractious and hungry army—reduced perhaps to a quarter of its original strength—that arrived outside Jerusalem in early June. A prolonged siege was therefore out of the question, and the Fatimid occupiers easily repulsed the crusaders’ initial full frontal assault. The arrival of a party of Genoese sailors in mid-June transformed the situation, however, since their engineering skill and timber supplies enabled siege towers to be built.

  THE BATTLE FOR JERUSALEM

  On July 13, 1099 the final assault began, although even then the organization of troops reflected differing group loyalties. Raymond’s southern French troops were massed by the south gate, while Godfrey of Bouillon and Tancred were among the commanders gathered at the north wall. The final push of July 15 was, however, a coordinated exercise, and the crusaders breached both the northern and the southern defenses. Atrocious scenes followed, with Muslims and Jews being put to the sword. Jerusalem’s population of Greek Christians had already been expelled from the city at the start of the siege, otherwise they, too, would probably have been massacred. A large number of Muslims had fled to take refuge in the Al-Aqsa mosque located on the Temple Mount. Tancred initially offered them his protection when calling a halt to the slaughter on July 15, but then had them killed the following day. Jerusalem’s synagogue was burned to the ground by the crusaders, and Jews who had sought safety inside the building were killed.

  Jerusalem would be organized as a kingdom. But was it seemly that the city where Christ the King had worn his unique crown of thorns should be ruled by a prince whose title would also be that of king? Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon, the two leading candidates for Jerusalem’s leadership, both had reservations on this point. (Both also recognized the political expediency of advertising so pious a reluctance.) When the crusaders’ council met at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on July 22 its members elected Godfrey to be the secular leader of Jerusalem, and he would rule without holding a kingly title. In a fit of anger Raymond led his men from the city. On August 12, at the coastal site of Ascalon, Godfrey’s authority and the kingdom’s security were confirmed when the forces of Christian Jerusalem defeated the coalition force led by Fatimid Egyptian commanders. The enmity between Raymond and Godfrey stopped the crusaders from capturing the city of Ascalon itself, but Jaffa, Tiberias and Haifa were among Godfrey’s subsequent conquests during his brief period as ruler. Furthermore, his creation of the Principality of Galilee and the county of Jaffa laid the foundations of a system of vassalage within the kingdom’s enlarged boundaries. Following his death in July 1100 Godfrey was succeeded by his brother Baldwin of Edessa, who had no qualms about being crowned king.

  The great majority of the First Crusade’s partisans who made it to Jerusalem were back home by 1100, leaving no more than a few hundred knights behind in the new kingdom. Many crusaders had returned home before Jerusalem’s capture, however, and they were keen to regain their honor by fulfilling the vow made when they took the Cross. Many of them, including Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois, therefore joined the further expedition that was launched in 1101. Most members of this subsidiary crusade, including Hugh, were slaughtered by Seljuk Turks while crossing Anatolia, and it was a mere remnant that arrived in Jerusalem by Easter 1102.

  Raymond of Toulouse’s ambition to rule his own crusader state led him to launch an offensive in the Lebanon against the emir of Tripoli in 1103. Following Raymond’s death in 1106 his son Bertrand continued the campaign and, following the emir’s surrender in 1109, he became ruler of the county of Tripoli—the last of the crusader states to be founded in the Levant. Latin princes therefore controlled the entire eastern Mediterranean coast by that stage, and the greatly weakened Seljuk Turks no longer bore down on the Greeks as heavily as had been the case in the 1080s. Islamic civilization, however, regarded the crusader states with a sense of shame mixed with anger. The question now was how best to beat the infidel on the doorstep.

  NEW CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES

  Although the crusading story is dominated by war, it also marked the beginning of a new phase in the history of the cultural relationship between Latins, Greeks and Muslims. La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland) was circulated in manuscript form in 12th-century France, and these copies incorporate references to Outremer, the crusaders’ name for Palestine.

  But there was an earlier oral tradition behind the Song, and the celebration of Roland as a self-sacrificial Christian hero is a literary anticipation of the crusading ideology. Settlers in the crusader state brought Western attitudes with them while also being affected by an international milieu. Crusaders who stayed, and their descendants, often learned Greek and Arabic. Intermarriage with Muslims who had converted was exceptional but more frequent in the case of Greek, Syriac and Armenian Christians. Information about Outremer circulated in the West, and William of Tyre (c.1130–86), archbishop of that see and before then chancellor of Jerusalem, produced a magnificent account of 12th-century Outremer in his Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum (History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea). Born and raised in Jerusalem, and then educated at Paris and Bologna, William wrote as a Latin Christian, but his account of both Greeks and Muslims shows a nuanced appreciation of cultures very different from his own. East-West trading contacts, aided by the presence of many Italian merchants, acquired a new vitality as a result of the crusader states’ foundation. Northern European woolen textiles appeared for the first time in the Middle East, and Palestine—which had been a commercial center for centuries—acquired new European markets. Sugar, lemons and melons, cotton, muslin and damask, powder, glass mirrors, and even the rosary—all made the journey from East to West and ensured that the crusades created a new appetite for luxury as well as spreading a taste for war.

  An illuminated detail from the Grandes Chroniques de France, depicting an episode in La Chanson de Roland.

  THE INVESTITURE CONTEST

  1024–1125

  The late 11th century saw a new and explosive issue arise in European politics: whether it should be kings or popes that had the right to appoint the senior clergy. Up until then sacerdotium and imperium (spiritual power and temporal power) had barely been distinguishable from each other. The empire presided over by German princes had been a particularly strong papal ally. In turn, successive popes endorsed the imperial campaign to convert and colonize the pagan populations to the east, and the senior clergy of the German Church—who were frequently noblemen and invariably appointe
d by the princes—played a key role in administering the reich or empire.

  Family connections and the politics of patronage had created a close-knit imperial governing circle by the late 11th century, but now the stability of this élite was first threatened and then undermined by the papacy’s assertion of its own independent power and rights. The contest over the right to “invest” or appoint senior clergy raised momentous questions about the nature of power, the basis of obedience and the legitimacy of government itself. Although its impact was greatest within the empire, the investiture struggle also acquired a pan-European dimension. It formed a major chapter in the development of public opinion, with both sides deploying speeches, sermons and texts in order to gain popular support. The papacy’s stance was startlingly novel, and its opponents had to counter it with explicit statements defining the basis of regal power.

  The wide-ranging assertion of papal authority instigated by Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) was the inspiration for reformers who now reacted against the papacy’s recent stance. Aristocratic factions in Rome and Italy had turned the papal office into their plaything in the tenth century, and the “Gregorian” reform movement’s pronounced idealism proposed a different path. The reformers asserted that it was God’s will that all mankind should be embraced within one Christian structure, and since the Church was the divine instrument charged with implementing such a vision, its authority was supreme over all forms of secular power. Providence allowed kings and princes to have their imperium, but they were subject to the papacy that, as the central and governing Church institution, existed on higher spiritual and moral planes. Successive legislative initiatives from the mid-11th century onward sought to implement this lofty vision and succeeded in creating a new body of canon law.

  RIGHT A copperplate painting of Pope Gregory VII from Salerno Cathedral, Italy, which he consecrated in 1085 and where he is also buried.

  HILDEBRAND—ELOQUENT CHAMPION OF THE CHURCH

  The intellectual vigor and brisk administrative style of Hildebrand, the son of a blacksmith, brought a meritocratic edge to the papal confrontation with Europe’s lay princes. Hildebrand bore the imprint of the great abbey at Cluny, the Benedictine foundation that spearheaded monasticism’s revival in Western Europe. His earlier career as a papal administrator, which included a period serving as legate in Paris, showed the same reformist zeal he would later display as Pope Gregory VII (1073–85). When the Roman aristocracy reverted to their old ways and elected their own candidate as pope, it was Hildebrand who led the papal army to victory on the island of Corsica where the unfortunate Benedict X had taken refuge. His eloquence made him the natural spokesman for the Gregorian movement’s distinctive causes—including clerical celibacy, which was seen as a way of nurturing collective self-confidence and entrenching the distinction between ecclesiastical and secular government. Church centralization meant that contentious cases had to be referred to Rome, and this irritated the many bishops who campaigned against this curtailment of their influence. By 1059 Hildebrand was serving as archdeacon in the city of Rome where he became a popular figure among the local population. The papacy of Alexander II saw a widespread implementation of the reform movement’s objectives, including restricting the right of papal election to the College of Cardinals. This denied the emperor his previous right to nominate a candidate—a measure that was central to the restoration of the Church’s independence. Hildebrand’s own accession to the papacy owed much to the support expressed for his candidacy on the streets of Rome, where a series of popular acclamations preceded his election by the cardinals on April 22, 1073.

  Simony involved the buying of Church offices, and Gregory was as devoted to its eradication as European monarchs were to its preservation. It was a good source of revenue and, for the imperial territories in particular, simony helped to ease the appointment of rulers’ relatives and supporters as bishops and abbots. In 1074 Gregory’s first council condemned simony in general and confirmed that celibacy should now be the rule for all clergy. A second council held in the following year stated that only the pope could appoint churchmen to their offices or move them from see to see. The German territories would be the testing ground for the implementation of these policies, and the newly elected emperor Henry IV was already having difficulty asserting his authority.

  HENRY—A WEAKENED MONARCH

  Henry’s childhood and youth had been turbulent, and the king’s headstrong temperament compounded his problems in the 1080s. Crowned king of the Germans as an infant in 1054, he succeeded to his father’s throne on Henry III’s sudden death three years later. The regency of his mother, the dowager empress Agnes, weakened her son’s position by assigning Bavaria, Swabia and Carinthia to nobles who were intent on reducing the infant king’s authority. Moreover, papal policy was already intent on interfering in the election of German bishops. In 1062 Henry was kidnapped by a group of noble conspirators led by Anno II, the archbishop of Cologne, who then took over the reins of power and supervised the young king’s education. Henry asserted his independence of that tutelage when he came of age, however, and he was enthroned at the age of 15 in 1065. In 1068 he attempted to divorce his wife Bertha but had to yield in the face of papal opposition. This only strengthened his suspicion of the papacy as an institution. At the same time Henry was facing major challenges to his rule. He confronted Slavic incursions, which included a major siege of Hamburg, and he had to quell revolts led by Rudolf of Swabia and Berthold of Carinthia. His conflict with Otto of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria, occupied Henry for years. Otto had been involved in the earlier kidnapping of the young king and, following accusations of further plotting, in 1070 Henry declared the duke to be deposed and took the opportunity to plunder Otto’s estates in Saxony. Otto had enough support, however, to sustain a rebellion in Thuringia as well as in Saxony until his submission in 1071. Henry was an unpopular figure among the Saxon population at large, since he had ordered the restoration of all Crown lands in the region and had built a series of fortifications there in an attempt to cow the local population. From 1073 until 1088 Henry was forced to deal with major insurrections among both the Saxons and the Thuringians.

  ABOVE In this illustration from the Life of Matilda of Tuscany, written by her courtier Donizo of Canossa and completed by 1115, the excommunicated Henry IV is on his knees. He is begging Matilda and Abbot Hugh of Cluny to intervene on his behalf in the conflict with Pope Gregory VII.

  Pope Gregory was therefore confronting a weakened monarch, and the Church Councils’ decisions meant, in effect, that the German Crown was threatened with the removal of the rights to about half of all its lands. Since Henry also ruled as king of Italy, there were major implications for the dispersal of power in the peninsula. Henry was right to see the papal policy as an attempt at delegitimizing him as king, and the authority of the German Crown would have collapsed if the bishops had removed their allegiance. The king, however, carried on nominating his candidates to German and Italian sees. Furthermore, he declared the new conciliar and papal decrees to be illegal. After Gregory excommunicated several members of the court in 1075 and threatened Henry with the same punishment, the king retaliated and held his own synod of the German Church.

  Gregory’s abduction on Christmas Day 1075 by Cencio I Frangipane—a member of the local nobility—together with his subsequent imprisonment, introduced a new level of violence to the dispute. Moreover, the pope, who was later released by local Romans, accused Henry of involvement in his abduction. On June 9 of that year Henry gained a crucial victory over the Saxon rebels at the Battle of Langensalza, and now he was ready for a major fight with the papacy. At a synod of bishops and princes held in Worms on January 24, 1076 Henry took the extraordinary step of declaring Gregory’s deposition. On February 22 the pope retaliated by excommunicating Henry and all the German bishops involved in the synod. Henry was now encountering opposition to his policy among some very alarmed German aristocrats. In October 1076 a diet of German princes meeting
at Tribur gave Henry a year to repent and to get the excommunication lifted. Otherwise they would declare the throne to be empty. Henry therefore relocated to north Italy, where some of the clergy of Lombardy were among his supporters, and shortly after Christmas 1076 he arrived in Pavia. Gregory at the same time was traveling to Augsburg for a prearranged meeting with the emperor. On learning of Henry’s arrival on Italian soil Gregory, fearing a military attack, took refuge in the castle of Canossa in Reggio-Emilia owned by his great supporter Matilda, the margrave of Tuscany.

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  THE INVESTITURE CONTEST

  1073 Hildebrand of Savona is elected Pope Gregory VII.

  1075 A Church council rules that only popes can appoint churchmen to their offices or transfer them between sees.

  1076 Henry IV declares Pope Gregory to be deposed (January 24). The pope excommunicates him (February 22).

  1077 Henry waits outside the gates of Canossa Castle (January 25–27) before being admitted to see Gregory, who lifts the sentence of excommunication.

  1077–80 German princes revolt and are then defeated by Henry.