God's War: A New History of the Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  Exhortation and admonition in official letters, sermons and propagandist tracts remained consistent. The destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem, Saladin’s capture of the Holy City and, especially, the loss of the True Cross represented a disaster of biblical proportions, redeemable only by individual and collective repentance. The rhetorical themes elevated the pragmatic to the transcendent. In a tract designed to accelerate preparations, Henry of Albano declared the cross ‘the ark of the vassal of the Lord, the ark of the New Testament’, ‘the glory of the Christian people, the remedy of sin, the care of the wounded, the restorer of health’.16 The image of the cross dominated written and spoken appeals, Henry of Albano’s formulae being mirrored, at times verbatim, by others, such as Peter of Blois, Archbishop Baldwin’s secretary, one of the most insistent crusade publicists. The language of the liturgy jostled with that of the Old Testament, the Eucharist with the Psalms and the Maccabees. ‘Christ’s blood cries out for help,’ proclaimed Peter of Blois.17 The crusade was carefully and closely identified with spiritual renewal. Specifically this process was associated with voluntary poverty and amendment of life. One contemporary preacher of the cross, Alan of Lille, emphasized that the poverty being praised by propagandists implied spiritual humility, not economic destitution. He made this clear by citing the version of the Sermon on the Mount Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3, ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’, not the socially more radical Luke 6:20 (‘blessed are you poor; for yours is the kingdom of Heaven’).18 The sumptuary regulations in Audita Tremendi, published by Henry of Albano in Germany and Henry II in England in 1188, underlined the thrust of the preaching, directed at prosperous audiences and aimed at moral regeneration, not social reform or redistribution of wealth. Adopting simple dress could be a gesture of reform only for those used to fine clothes, not an option for paupers and beggars. The repeated themes were of penance, not vainglory, humility of spirit, not in an embrace of indigence but a rejection of the mentality of wealth. As Gregory VIII put it, ‘we are not saying “give up the things you have” but “send them off to the heavenly barn and entrust them to God”’.19 Such entreaties became more urgent as political in-fighting delayed the departure of the crusade in 1189 and 1190. However, presenting this mixture of obligation and opportunity for Christian renewal through the recovery of the Holy Land was not left to metaphor. Repeated emphasis on Saladin’s violence, the fate of the vanquished of Hattin, as captives or, like Reynald of Châtillon, martyrs, and the desecration of the Holy Places firmly located the forthcoming struggle in the temporal as well as spiritual sphere.

  The process of disseminating the message was carefully managed. The designated papal legates recruited local ecclesiastics to proselytize their own regions. Not least this helped bridge the language barrier. Henry of Albano, legate to the Germans, reputedly knew no German.20 Interpreters were essential members of any preaching team in alien country, whether at Mainz in 1188 or on Archbishop Baldwin’s Welsh tour, when the archdeacon of Bangor performed the job.21 Occasionally, and perhaps for the same reason, laymen were recruited to speak, as, it was later recorded, in Denmark, where Esbern, brother of the Slav-bashing archbishop of Lund, stirred his fellow nobles by evoking their Viking past, the glory of which nonetheless paled in comparison with ‘the greater and more profitable conquests’ of holy war.22 Partially hidden networks of affinity underpinned the operation. Both Henry of Albano and Baldwin of Canterbury were former Cistercian abbots. Their order played a distinctive role in fostering crusade enthusiasm at this time by devising special regular prayers for crucesignati included in their liturgical round. Perhaps not unconnected, in the lands of the French king, Cistercians managed to win exemption from the crusade tax.

  Besides official ecclesiastical support, political, social and personal contacts exerted similar pressure. After the meeting at Gisors in January 1188, the English and French kings agreed to levy a special tax of 10 per cent on movables, soon nicknamed the Saladin Tithe. The process of collecting this tax, which seems to have begun in the spring of 1188, spread the news of the enterprise perhaps more effectively than any grandiose preaching campaign. The great Paris assembly in March 1188, at which the Tithe was authorized in Philip II’s lands, was attended by large numbers of clergy, nobles and an ‘innumerable multitude’ of knights and commoners.23 Given that those who had taken the cross were exempted for payment, the tax may also have proved a highly effective recruiting agent. One departing crusader from the Dauphiné in the foothills of the Alps referred more generally to the ‘magna mota’, the great movement, of the Jerusalem expedition, suggesting a similarly wide exchange of information through the networks of trade, social dialogue and travel.24

  The ears of the great were repeatedly bent by crusade enthusiasts. Especially vulnerable were those, such as Henry II, who could be accused of procrastination. Peter of Blois, who had first alerted the Angevin court to the shocked reaction of the papal Curia to the news of Hattin in September 1187, composed a series of exhortatory crusade pamphlets. In 1188–9, he spent much time at the king’s side. In the spring of 1189, Peter witnessed a private encounter between King Henry and the abbot of Bonneval in which the abbot lamented the delays in sending any troops to the Holy Land despite the practical difficulties – essentially the problems of kingship in a wicked world – Henry self-pityingly outlined. The abbot’s criticism merely echoed more public denunciations of backsliding and internecine political squabbling, for example, by the legate Henry of Albano.25 The effectiveness of such personal approaches on Henry cannot easily be assessed, as he died shortly afterwards, in July 1189.

  News of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem had overcome Henry’s quarter-century equivocation over the Holy Land and his innate dislike of being told his military duty by the church. During the visit to the west of Heraclius of Jerusalem in 1185, Henry privately expostulated, ‘these clerks can incite us boldly to arms and danger since they themselves will receive no blows in the struggle, nor will they undertake any burdens which they can avoid’.26 Many had failed to answer the increasingly urgent appeals from Jerusalem for aid in the 1180s, so Henry was probably not alone in harbouring such doubts. Ralph Niger, a well-connected close observer of these events in northern France and a critic of Outremer before 1187, doubted the spiritual benefit of an armed crusade without a prior, commensurate spiritual transformation amongst western crusaders.27 However, such objections became untenable in the face of both the news from Outremer and the subsequent propaganda campaign.

  Successful recruitment depended on secular support. William II of Sicily had set the tone for his people by adopting a hair shirt and shutting himself away for four days, as well as commissioning a fleet to provide immediate aid for Outremer.28 Inevitably, papal letters and legates were directed at royal courts, where their reception determined the scale of the response. In Denmark, there were some significant naval contributions, possibly concentrated in the ports of southern Jutland nearest to the Frisians with whom many of them sailed. However, without Canute VI taking the cross, noble commitment was modest, one source identifying only fifteen crusaders ‘whose hearts God specially touched’.29 The five nobles who actually embarked were all close associates of the king, and so presumably enjoyed his approval. Similarly, across the border in Norway, the leader of the small Norwegian force, Ulf of Lauvnes, was a royal favourite, but the lack of King Sverre’s participation restricted aristocratic engagement. The picture appeared the same in Scotland, where William the Lion avoided entanglement in an operation led by his overbearing southern neighbour. As a consequence, only a handful of Scottish royal courtiers and officials took the cross, led by Robert of Quincy, himself of Anglo-Norman ancestry.30

  In none of these northern European countries was preaching widespread, partly because its function was primarily to confirm existing enthusiasms rather than to stir up enthusiasm from scratch. In Germany, France and England the extensive preaching campaigns followed demonstrations of overt royal commitment, on the pattern of
Louis VII and Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146. The main preaching agents were not only close to the monarch but were actively engaged in the wider organization of the enterprise. Bishop Godfrey of Würzburg, a count in his own right (of Helfenstein), followed his preaching efforts in early 1188 with a central role in diplomatic preparations and later in the conduct of the eastern expedition which he accompanied, to die at Antioch in July 1190. In England Archbishop Baldwin led the preaching, not, as it proved, for any particular oratorical skill but as the embodiment of both secular and ecclesiastical authority. Like Godfrey of Würzburg, Baldwin was committed to undertake the crusade. One of his companions recalled soon after how, on 10 April 1188, in a steep and difficult valley near Caernavon, Baldwin ordered his party to dismount and march on foot ‘in intention at least rehearsing what we thought we would experience when we went on our pilgrimage to Jerusalem’.31 Like Bishop Godfrey, Archbishop Baldwin gave his life to the crusade, dying at the siege of Acre in November 1190.

  While the impact of the preaching of the Third Crusade was spectacular, it presumed prior acceptance of the message being promoted. Preaching provided ceremonial confirmation of pledges already agreed and created the conditions in which preparation, planning and recruitment could be achieved with the maximum public consent. Preaching rarely created a spontaneous response. By taking the cross the crucesignatus not only acquired exemptions from repayment of debts, paying the crusade tax and answering certain law suits but also gave a solemn promise to fulfil the vow, in theory enforceable through canon law. The high chances of death on crusade and the need to convert income into capital, commonly through sale or mortgage of property, required careful consideration and consultation not least with other family members. Conjugal rights also could not, in theory, be ignored nor the very real dangers to life, limb and possessions to which abandoned crusaders’ wives, widows and heiresses were liable. Numerous uplifting moral anecdotes, known as exempla, concerned the obtaining of family agreement before the irrevocable adoption of the cross. On a social as well as political level, the crusade sermon and the ritual of giving the cross constituted an act of recognition as much as inspiration.

  Tricks of theatre and stagecraft were necessary if the ritual was to work as it should, ceremonially conveying a religious and political message of identity and mutual commitment. The rhetoric’s effect relied on the audience being primed by expectation, through prior advertisement, and a barrage of oratorical devices, from the lurid atrocity stories, to the metaphorical exploitation of the image of the cross, to powerful verbal refrains. The exempla, according to an Anglo-Norman preaching manual of a generation later, were designed to attract listeners’ attention and prevent boredom as well as inspiring contrition.32 The customary liturgical setting for the sermon was provided by the mass, with its concentration on the sufferings of Christ, the cross and repentance. Conveniently, in 1187–8 preaching coincided with the seasons of Christocentric festivals of Christmas and Easter, and the penitential period of Lent. Before the Second Crusade, Louis VII had announced his desire to go to the Holy Land at Christmas 1145, Bernard of Clairvaux preached at Vézelay at Easter 1146 and Conrad III took the cross at Christmas 1146, occasions not forced by events as in 1187–8.

  If the timing and ceremonial setting were carefully chosen, so were the props. Congregations were accustomed to understand wordless messages, such as those conveyed by relics. When Philip II of France finally left on crusade in June 1190, he received the scrip and staff of a pilgrim at the royal abbey church of St Denis in front of an array of relics that encouraged all present to pray not just to the saints on show but also to the Virgin May and to Christ Himself ‘for the deliverance of the Holy Land’.33 The transcendent was a potent presence. Fragments of the True Cross had proved popular since the First Crusade. Crucifixes, increasingly prominent in the rituals of the mass in the twelfth century, probably served as well, reflecting the centrality of the cross in Third Crusade propaganda. In Wales during Lent 1188, the preachers shared a cross that each handed to the next member of the team when it was their turn to speak.34 More striking visual aids may have been employed, although testimony comes only from two Muslim observers. According to the well-informed Iraqi historian Ibn al-Athir (1160–1233), a picture was circulated in the west showing Christ being struck in the face by an Arab. Saladin’s friend and chief judge in his army, Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad, recorded that Conrad of Montferrat, whose timely appearance had saved Tyre in July 1187, commissioned a large painting of Jerusalem showing a Muslim cavalryman trampling over the Holy Sepulchre on which his horse was urinating. ‘This picture he publicised overseas in the markets and assemblies, as the priests, bareheaded and dressed in sackcloth, paraded it, crying doom and destruction.’35 Both Muslim writers strongly disapproved of such representational religious art, which may be why they mentioned these pictures. But Ibn Shaddad accurately commented that ‘images affect [Christians’] hearts, for they are essential to their religion’. If used, such large illustrated screens would have provided telling support for the preachers’ message to audiences already well versed in how to read sacred wall paintings and stained glass, although they may have been startled and impressed by the pictures’ immediacy and direct relevance.

  A full array of persuasive artifice was displayed on Archbishop Baldwin’s Lenten tour of Wales from 2 March to 23 April 1188 as described by one of its leading members, the royal clerk Gerald of Wales, prolific chronicler, ethnographer, polemicist and frustrated careerist, whose Journey through Wales, drafted within months of the event, served the dual function of historical account and immediate crusade propaganda.36 As with many crusade preaching campaigns, Baldwin’s mission combined ecclesiastical and secular politics with its religious purpose. By celebrating mass in each of the Welsh cathedrals, Baldwin was asserting the authority of Canterbury over an independent-minded and occasionally recalcitrant provincial church. Involving the Welsh princes in the crusade restricted their capacity to cause trouble in the event of the king of England’s absence as well as publicly binding them into the English royal polity. When Owain Cyfeiliog ‘alone of all the Welsh princes’ failed to present himself to take the cross he was excommunicated. The meticulous organization reflected these multiple purposes. Magnates and bishops were visited in turn, and, given the frequency with which local leaders met the archbishop’s party on entering their territory, almost certainly by pre-arrangement. Gryffydd ap Cynan of Gwynedd even apologized for being late. The preaching of the cross formed a central part of the wider plan. Once they were crucesignati, the Welsh princes were obliged to support Henry II’s crusade, a role of potential subservience that the Scottish nobility studiously and successfully avoided.

  In his characteristically self-regarding style, Gerald frankly admitted the careful stage-management and theatrical manipulation of the preaching and cross-taking ceremonies. He recalled the role he played at New Radnor on 4 March after the archbishop’s opening sermon of the tour:

  I myself who have written these words, was the first to stand up. I threw myself at the holy man’s feet and devoutly took the sign of the cross. It was the urgent admonition given some time before by the King which inspired me to give this example to the others, and the persuasion and oft-repeated promises of the archbishop and the Chief Justiciar [Ranulf Glanvill, himself a crucesignatus], who never tired of repeating the King’s words… In doing so I gave strong encouragement to the others and an added incentive to what they had just been told.

  Gerald later confessed that the king had added the douceur of promising to pay his crusade expenses.37 The essential manoeuvre was to set an example, to show the rest of the congregation what to do, as Adhemar of Le Puy had done at Clermont in 1095. Directing crowd psychology was important. Gerald’s taking the cross was thus premeditated, not at all dependent on the quality of Baldwin’s sermon, an experience that was unlikely to have been unusual in 1188 even if the part played by the greatest in the land was.

  Although local inter
preters were employed, what was actually preached may have mattered less than how and by whom it was spoken. The language of third-party descriptions of crusade sermons in 1187–8 across Europe stressed the formality of proceedings, rather like the Latin liturgy itself. Gerald’s personal testimony confirms this. His greatest popular success at Haverfordwest on 23 March provoked over 200 to adopt the cross, yet he preached in Latin and French, which many of his audience could not understand. The force of delivery apparently counted for more than the detailed content of the speech. After Archbishop Baldwin’s address had flopped, Gerald, on being handed the portable cross as a prop, roused his audience to surge forward to take the cross in three carefully contrived rhetorical climaxes. A resentful wife of one of those who took the cross by being caught up in this crowd enthusiasm later allegedly complained of Gerald’s bewitching ‘soft words’ and ‘simple looks’ without which her husband and the rest ‘would have got clear off, as far as the preaching of the others was concerned’.38

  However incomprehensible the actual words, the ceremonial religious context underlined the message. On one level, as indicated in Gregory VIII’s Audita Tremendi, preaching the cross was a general call to repent. For Baldwin’s team, as for Henry of Albano and Godfrey of Würzburg in Germany, this penitential purpose matched the season of Lent. The archbishop’s sermon at Chester on Easter Day, 17 April, marked the climax of the Welsh part of his tour. Other festival days with special appropriateness were also set aside by preachers of the Third Crusade to reinforce the ubiquitous symbolism and cult of Jerusalem and the cross: 14 September, Holy Cross Day, or ‘Laetare Jerusalem’ Sunday, chosen by Henry of Albano for Frederick Barbarossa’s ‘court of Christ’ and by Philip II for his Paris assembly in March 1188.39 Crusade sermons were often placed immediately after the celebration of mass, whose elements of confession and penance feature prominently in Gerald’s account. The concentration on the figure, passion and redemptive nature of Christ Crucified within the mass provided the closest association with the aims of crusade sermons and the rituals for adopting the cross. More precisely, a sermon delivered immediately after the mass invited audiences to choose to follow or reject Christ in the very presence of His body and blood, the consecrated and, as was increasingly believed, transubstantiated elements of the Eucharist. (The doctrine of transubstantiation, insisting on the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, while previously widely accepted by academics and others, only became the official teaching of the Roman Catholic church at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.) Where no mass preceded the preaching, as on Anglesey on 11 April, the General Confession was recited, as it had been at Clermont in 1095. For some recruits, such as a group of criminals – ‘robbers, highwaymen and murderers’ – at Usk, adopting the cross was likened to a form of conversion.40 An aura of sanctity, at least in remembrance, attended the expedition, Gerald recording a number of miracles of healing associated with spots where the cross had been preached as well as littering his narrative with miraculous and uplifting anecdotes.41