A History of the Crusades

by Jonathan Riley-Smith

  These are but some of the more notable and obvious effects of the crusading movement in this period, but nothing directly has been said here about the impact upon the crusader himself, his family, his friends, his tenants. Yet it was at this very personal and human level that the crusading movement wrought perhaps its most powerful and poignant influence for those caught up within it at the time. As in all wars, many participants returned physically or mentally scarred, if they returned at all; their lives could never be the same again. Nor could the lives of crusaders’ wives and children, and those otherwise entwined in the crusader’s fate for one reason or another. Modern historical research is only now beginning to unearth the profundities of the crusading movement’s impact at this fundamental level.

  4

  The State of Mind of Crusaders to the East

  1095–1300

  JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH

  CRUSADING attracted men and women of all classes. The involvement of the masses in the First Crusade was attributed by a contemporary to disorder, to an epidemic of ergotism which was sweeping western Europe, and to economic distress. He described what appeared to be a passage of migration, with many of the poor travelling ‘weighed down by wives, children and all their domestic goods’. Pope Urban had not wanted unsuitable men and women of this sort to join a military expedition—he had, he wrote in 1097, ‘been stimulating the minds of knights’—but precisely because he had preached the crusade as a pilgrimage, a devotional activity open to all, he and his successors found it hard to prevent the unsuitable going, even after Innocent III had found a solution in crusade redemptions. In the end, the cost of taking part proved to be more effective than official discouragement. There seem to have been substantial numbers of the poor in the armies which marched overland to the East, but once expeditions started going by sea the poor were less able to meet the expenses of the passage. Although there were always some, creating problems for the leaders as we have seen, their numbers declined, while their self-generated crusades, in which, perhaps, they responded to their exclusion from expeditions which were anyway becoming more professional—the Children’s Crusade of 1212, the Popular Crusade of 1309, and the Shepherds’ Crusades of 1251 and 1320—never succeeded in breaking out of western Europe.

  The masses were an important, if irregular, element and it is disappointing that hardly any evidence about the way they thought or felt survives. When we come to the more substantial crusaders, the merchants, craftsmen, and farmers, shafts of light break through at times. For instance, in December 1219 Barzella Merxadrus, a citizen of Bologna, drew up a will when he was very ill in the camp at Damietta in Egypt. He made his wife Guiletta his heir to any property or spoil that might have been apportioned to him and he tried to make sure that she could keep her place in the tent they had shared with other crusaders. But such insights are rare, and good evidence is to be found only for the feelings and perceptions of the landowning nobles and knights. The more prosperous among them were prominent enough to be mentioned frequently in the narrative accounts. They had social positions to maintain and therefore the costs of households on crusade to meet, and, since they had property to dispose of for cash, they generated charters which often contain priceless information on their states of mind.

  Crusaders ‘took the cross’, which involved making a vow of a particular kind, often at emotional public gatherings under the influence of preachers whose business it was to whip their audiences up into a frenzy. It has been suggested that by the third quarter of the twelfth century the taking of the cross and the rite granting the pilgrimage symbols of purse and staff were being merged into a single ceremony. This may be so, but originally the rituals were distinct. King Louis VII of France went through two of them, separated in time and space, when he was preparing for the Second Crusade. He made his vow to crusade on 31 March 1146 at Vézelay, where a large gathering had assembled. Louis and the greater nobles took the cross at a semi-private ceremony, at which the king was given a cross sent by the pope. He joined the preacher, St Bernard of Clairvaux, for the public meeting and stood on a platform with him wearing his cross, obviously to encourage the audience. Such was the enthusiasm with which Bernard’s sermon was greeted that the packet of cloth crosses which had been prepared for distribution was used up and Bernard had to tear his monastic habit into strips to provide more. Then, over a year later on 11 June 1147 at St Denis, Louis received from the hands of the pope the symbols of pilgrimage, the purse and the oriflamme, the battle-standard of the French crown, given presumably in place of the staff.

  These procedures were paralleled everywhere in the early decades of crusading. After nobles and knights had taken the cross, they would make private arrangements to receive the purse and staff, and perhaps also the blessing which appears in the later rites, from a local bishop, abbot, or prior. This second ceremony was sometimes associated with a financial arrangement with, or a donation for, the religious community concerned. For instance, on 22 May 1096 in the chapter house of Lérins, Fulk Doon of Châteaurenard donated quite a lot of property to the abbey. He was handed a napkin (in place of the pilgrim’s purse) and a staff by the abbot, who enjoined the crusade on him as a penance and also gave him a mule. Ceremonies of this type may have continued long after the two rites had been joined together: in 1248 John of Joinville received the symbols of pilgrimage, and apparently them alone, from the abbot of Cheminon.

  Introducing the cross as a visible symbol of the vow of commitment, Urban associated the taking and wearing of it in a highly-charged way with Christ’s precepts, ‘Every one that hath left house or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold and shall possess life everlasting’ (Matthew 19: 29) and ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (Matthew 16: 24 or Luke 14: 27). From Syria the crusade leaders wrote to him as ‘You who by your sermons made us all leave our lands and whatever was in them and ordered us to follow Christ by taking up our crosses’.

  Some men responded hysterically, branding crosses on their bodies, but the sight of the ordinary cloth crosses must have been striking enough. An early twelfth-century sculpture from the priory of Belval in Lorraine shows a crusader wearing on his chest a cross made from 5 cm wide strips of cloth; the cross looks as though it measured 15 by 15 cm. Contingents soon came to distinguish themselves by the style or colour of the crosses they wore—this practice seems to have been introduced in the late 1140s for the Wendish crusaders, who wore a badge of a cross superimposed on a ball—and, as we have already seen, at a planning meeting for the Third Crusade it was decided that the French participants would wear red crosses, the English white ones, and the Flemish green.

  Crusaders were expected to wear their crosses on their clothing at all times until they came home with their vows fulfilled: in 1123 the bishops at the First Lateran Council referred to those ‘who had taken their crosses off’ without departing. It should, therefore, have been possible to tell who was a crusader and it was important to do so. The leaders of the First Crusade were convinced that there was a reservoir of additional manpower in the West which could be deployed if only the Church would force laggards to fulfil their vows. Demands of this sort were made throughout the history of the crusading movement and attempts were periodically made to establish just how large the reservoir of ‘false crusaders’ was. But it was a lot easier to rail against those who had had second thoughts than to make them do what they had promised.

  Another reason why it was important to know who had taken the cross was that crusaders enjoyed special rights. At first there was confusion, even among the higher clergy, about at least one of the privileges granted them by the Council of Clermont, the commitment by the Church to protect their families and properties while they were away. Hugh II of Le Puiset, who had taken the cross for the crusade of 1107, felt threatened by a castle thrown up on a farm in his viscounty by Count Rotrou of Mortagne, who had, inc
identally, been on the First Crusade. Hugh’s bishop, Ivo of Chartres, although one of the greatest canonists of the age, passed the matter over to a secular court. Violence ensued and Hugh appealed to the pope who reallocated the case. Ivo pointed out that churchmen could not agree what to do, because ‘this law of the Church protecting the goods of knights going to Jerusalem was new. They did not know whether the protection applied only to the crusaders’ possessions, or also to their fortifications.’

  By the thirteenth century, however, the privileges had become clearly defined, giving crusaders an advantage in law, because so many of them had legal implications. Besides the indulgence, about which more below, and protection, they included a delay in the performance of feudal service or in judicial proceedings until return, or alternatively a speedy settlement of a court case before departure; a moratorium on the repayment of debt or the payment of interest; exemption from tolls and taxes; freedom for a cleric to enjoy a benefice in absentia and for a knight to sell or pledge fiefs or inalienable property to raise money; release from excommunication; licence to have dealings with excommunicates and freedom from the consequences of interdict; the ability to use the crusade vow as a substitute for another not yet fulfilled; and the right to have a personal confessor with wide powers of absolution.

  Crusaders obviously had a high profile. No one has yet made a study of the effects on their social standing of engaging in such a prestigious activity, but there can be little doubt that the title Jerosolimitanus adopted by them gained them honour in their neighbourhoods and even internationally. When Bohemond of Taranto toured France in 1106, in a triumph which culminated in his marriage to the king of France’s daughter in Chartres cathedral, many French nobles wanted him to be godfather to their children. He lectured about his adventures to large audiences and his experiences as a prisoner of the Muslims became incorporated in the Miracula of St Leonard, whose shrine he ostentatiously visited. Two or three generations after the First Crusade families were still proud of ancestors who had fought in it.

  A much less welcome consequence of taking the cross was often obloquy. No group of people in the central Middle Ages brought down on their heads such venomous criticism as did crusaders. The reason was that failure in God’s own war fought at his bidding could not possibly be attributed to him, but only, as it had been in the Old Testament, to the unworthiness of the instruments at his disposal, in this case the soldiers of Christ. Because it was ideologically necessary to blame them for every failure, crusaders were subjected to torrents of abuse from reactions at home to the disasters of 1101 onwards.

  But whether a crusade was a success or a failure, every crusader risked death, injury, or financial ruin, and apprehension shrouded the charters issued before departure like a cloud. In 1096 Stephen of Blois gave a wood to the abbey of Marmoutier ‘so that God, at the intercession of St Martin and his monks, might pardon me for whatever I have done wrong and lead me on the journey out of my homeland and bring me back healthy and safe, and watch over my wife Adela and our children’. He and many others found comfort in the thought that intercessory prayers were being said for them back home. According, it must be admitted, to the intercessors themselves, Ranulf of Chester, returning in 1220 from Damietta in a ship tossed and nearly wrecked by a storm, remained unmoved until midnight, when he suddenly became active because at that time ‘my monks and other religious, whom my ancestors and I have established in various places, arise to chant divine service and remember me in their prayers’.

  Stephen of Blois’s anxiety about the security of the family he was going to leave behind was echoed in many charters, in spite of the role of protector the Church had assumed. It has often been written that Pope Urban had hoped to canalize the bellicosity of the armsbearers away from western Europe and that in this respect the crusade was an instrument of domestic peace. But everyone must have known that the absence of leading magnates from the scene would have the opposite effect and this may be why the preaching of the crusade was accompanied by a renewal of peace decrees in church councils. Flanders suffered while Count Robert was absent on the First Crusade. When Guy of Rochefort came riding back into his castellany in 1102 he was met with a catalogue of complaints; while he had been away ‘scarcely anyone could be brought to justice’. In 1128 Baldwin of Vern d’Anjou came to a very detailed arrangement with his brother Rual ‘concerning his land and all his possessions and his wife with their only daughter’. Rual promised always to deal faithfully with the two women, never to try to take away property to which they had a right, and to aid them against anyone who injured them ‘even to making war himself’. The agreement, which demonstrates clearly the threat posed by a younger, and probably unmarried, brother to a crusader’s wife and daughter and the need to take steps to counter it, was witnessed by ten men and was guaranteed by Baldwin’s immediate lord.

  The fact is that even in the thirteenth century and in England, where the crown had taken over the protection of a crusader’s property, the experiences of kin, particularly women, left behind for several years to manage estates and bring up families, surrounded by rapacious neighbours and litigious relations, could be horrific, and judicial records reveal a depressing inventory of the injuries of every sort to which they were exposed. William Trussel’s wife was murdered six weeks after he had left on crusade in 1190 and her body was thrown into a marl pit. Peter Duffield’s wife was strangled while he was on the Fifth Crusade, and Ralph Hodeng came home to find his daughter and heiress married to one of his peasants. It is not surprising that crusaders felt safer taking measures of their own. For instance, in 1120 Geoffrey of Le Louet put his wife into the care of the nuns of Le Ronceray d’Angers for a fee; he promised a supplement to the sum as an entry gift should she wish to become a nun herself. At the same time Fulk of Le Plessis-Macé arranged for the nuns to look after his daughter. If he should not return, they were to allow her to marry or become a nun ‘according to her will and that of her brothers and other friends’. If she should decide not to enter the community he promised the nuns one of his nieces as an oblate and he guaranteed her entry gift. Touching arrangements were negotiated by a recruit to the Second Crusade, Hugh Rufus of Champallement, who had a very sick or disabled brother called Guy. Hugh made a grant of property to the monks of Corbigny, from the rents of which Guy was to be provided with a pension in cash and kind, payable at fixed times in the year. The monks would bury him in their cemetery should he die.

  Just as vital to the interests of crusaders were the arrangements they had to make for the administration of their properties in what were bound to be long absences: at the time of the First Crusade there seems to have been already talk of a three-year campaign and in 1120 Fulk of Le Plessis-Macé was allowing for the fact that he might be away for a similar period. Members of the family or neighbours or vassals could be made responsible for management. From the family it could be the eldest son, or a younger one, or a brother, for instance the first crusader Gerald of Landerron’s brother Auger, prior of St Pierre de La Réole, in whose care Gerald left his castles and sons. Auger promised to ‘rear the sons until the time that he himself would make them knights’. It was also quite common for wives or mothers to take over these responsibilities, but sometimes it seems that there was no one in a family considered capable of the charge. In 1101 Guy of Bré handed custody of his land and daughter to a neighbour, Oliver of Lastours, whose father and uncle had been on the expedition of 1096–9. Oliver later married her. Among other early crusaders, Geoffrey of Issoudun left his castle in the hands of one of his vassals and Hugh of Gallardon entrusted his castle and daughter to his knights. From the late twelfth century English crusaders were appointing attorneys to look after their interests.

  Crusaders knew that they were involving themselves in something that was going to be very costly, and we have already seen how expensive crusading was. There is very little evidence for the first crusaders coming home wealthy after the crippling expenses and severities of the campaign, alt
hough they certainly brought back relics and showered European churches with them. Guy of Rochefort was said to have came back in 1102 ‘in glory and abundance’, whatever that might mean. A knight called Grimald, passing by Cluny, became a confrater, made a will in the abbey’s favour and presented it with an ounce of gold. Hadvide of Chiny, who had crusaded with her husband Dodo of Cons-la-Grandville, gave St Hubert-en-Ardenne a complete set of vestments in precious cloth and a chalice made from nine ounces of gold and adorned with jewels. But these are the only known references to riches possibly gained on the earliest expeditions and it is not likely that there are many more to be found, given the expenses of the return journey and the impracticability of carrying quantities of bullion or precious material over such long distances.

  On the other hand, the survivors and their families had pledges to redeem and debts to repay, and a pressing need for cash led some men, and sometimes their relations, to try to lessen the damage by resorting to whatever measures were available to them. When Fulk I of Matheflon came back from the East in 1100 he tried to exact a toll on a bridge he had built and to levy another on pigs, and he shrewdly turned to his advantage an old dispute with the nuns of Le Ronceray d’Angers. Early in the eleventh century the village of Seiches-sur-le-Loir had been given to the nuns by Countess Hildegarde of Anjou. The castle of Matheflon had then been built in the parish and within its enceinte a wooden church had been constructed. But the population had grown and Fulk and Le Ronceray had agreed to replace the church in stone. The church had been built and Fulk had agreed to surrender his share of the tithes and to fund a priest, although he was given a substantial sum for this. He had not kept his side of the bargain, however, and he had held on to the tithes, so that he and the nunnery were at odds up to the time he left on the First Crusade. While he was away his son Hugh came to recognize that the nuns had a case and made over the tithes for another, larger sum, which he agreed to return if Fulk refused to accept what he had done. When Fulk got back he wanted, or pretended to want, to nullify the agreement, but he was persuaded to endorse it for an even larger amount.