As with any exercise in historical selectivity, which means all historical writing, extracting the thread of the crusade from the weave of the middle ages distorts both. Nonetheless, the experience of crusading is worth study if only because of the immediacy with which it addresses the observer. The world, assumptions and actions of crusaders and their contemporaries are irrecoverable but inescapable. Their deeds confront the historian directly, the sheer physical effort of so much of the endeavour; the inspirational idealism; utopianism armed with myopia; the elaborate, sincere intolerance; the diversity and complexity of motive and performance. Of equal if not greater power to move than the great set pieces of crusade history – Urban II at Clermont, the massacre at Jerusalem, Saladin at Hattin, Richard I at Acre, Louis IX at Mansourah – are the stories of the battered wives of absent crusaders, the evidence of ruined or enriched lives of veterans and survivors, the crosses etched into the stones of the church of the Holy Sepulchre or parish churches across Europe, intimate witnesses to the ambitions of those who sought to transform themselves and their world by taking the cross of their Saviour. As Josserand of Brancion prayed before he took the cross in 1248, ‘Lord, take me from wars between Christians in which I have spent much of my life; let me die in your service so I may share your kingdom in Paradise’. Although the central cliché of aristocratic engagement with crusading, echoed in sources from the First Crusade onwards, the poignancy of these sentiments comes from the testimony of tens of thousands of corpses of men and women of all social stations. However wasteful of life and treasure, however narrow the original and sustaining aspiration to physical possession of the Holy Places, this was an ideal that inspired sacrifice at times on an almost unimaginable scale and intensity.
Yet sentimentality will not do. It hardly encompasses the subject. Too many died in the pursuit of sectarian ambition. Yet motives, like actions, can contradict without hypocrisy. While it is usually fruitless for historians to pursue the will of the wisp of private emotions, the question of what caused so many to change their lives so decisively persists. It is a fond myth of the religious that piety excludes greed, coercion, conformity and lack of reflection, that it is freestanding. The language of transcendence should not distract or dupe. Neither should it insist on judgement. Fighting for the cross was not necessarily more glamorous than paying taxes for it, only more strenuous. Both activities are open to reductive interpretations of unavoidable cultural or social compulsion. However, there can be no clear or sonorous summing-up. Wars destroy and create, even if in unequal measures for participants, victims and home communities. Explicable in collective terms as an expression or expressions of belief, anxiety, religious or social obedience, moral and material self-advancement, corporate solidarity and identity, solipsistic intolerance and expansive aggression, for each individual any choice involved in the crusade may or may not have caught ‘the hidden wishes of God’. External manifestations can be observed. Yet the internal, personal decision to follow the cross, to inflict harm on others at great personal risk, at the cost of enormous privations, at the service of a consuming cause, cannot be explained, excused or dismissed either as virtue or sin. Rather, its very contradictions spelt its humanity.
Notes
The following abbreviations are used in the notes.
MGH
Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Hanover etc. 1826ff.)
MGHS
Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, ed. G. H. Pertz et al. (Hanover 1826ff.)
MGH SS
MGH Scriptores in Folio et Quarto (Hanover etc. 1826–1934)
PL
Patrologia cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris 1844–64)
RHC
Recueil des historiens des croisades (Paris 1844–1906)
RHC Arm.
RHC Documents arméniens (Paris 1869–1906)
RHC Occ.
RHC Documents occidentaux (Paris 1844–95)
RHC Or.
Documents orientaux (Paris 1872–1906)
RHGF
Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France (Paris 1738–1876)
1: The Origins of Christian Holy War
1. Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Cluny, ed. A. Bruel, v (Paris 1894), 51–3, no. 3703; Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Victor de Marseille, ed. M. Guérard (Paris 1857), i, 167–8, no. 143.
2. H. Hagenmeyer, Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100 (Innsbruck 1902), pp. 138–40, 141–2, 144, 146–9, 150, 151, 157, 160, 162; and pp. 136–7 for Urban’s letter to the Flemish, J. and L. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality (London 1981), p. 38.
3. De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, ed. C. W. David (New York 1936; reprint 1976), p. 81, as part of a comprehensive justification for holy war put in the mouth of the bishop of Oporto; for the identity of the author, H. Livermore, ‘“The Conquest of Lisbon” and its Author’, Portuguese Studies, 6 (1990), 1–16.
4. From De laude novae militiae, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq et al. (Rome 1963), pp. 214–15; J. and L. Riley-Smith, Crusades, p. 102.
5. S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades (Cambridge 1951–4), iii, 480.
6. Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, RHC Occ., iii, 300, trans. J. H. and L. L. Hill (Philadelphia 1968), p. 128; for biblical citations P. Alphandéry, ‘Les Citations biblique chez les historiens de la première croisade’, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 99 (1929), 139–57, esp. p. 154, note 4; cf. Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 153–5.
7. Die Traditionsbücher des Benediktinerstiftes Güttweig, ed. A. Fuchs (Vienna and Leipzig 1931), Fontes rerum Austriacum, lxix, no. 55.
8. For a summary, F. H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge 1977), pp. 1–39.
9. St Augustine, City of God, bk XIX, c. 7; cf. bk I, c. 21, trans. H. Bettenson (London 1984), pp. 32, 862.
10. C. Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of the Crusade, trans. M. W. Baldwin and W. Goffart (Princeton 1977), p. 19.
11. Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford 1969), pp. 214–15, 231, 240–43, 251.
12. A. Bruckner and R. Marichal, Chartae Latinae antiquores, xii (Zurich 1987), 74, no. 543; P. D. King, Charlemagne: Translated Sources (Kendal 1987), pp. 223, 309–10; Einhard, Vita Caroli magni imperatoris, ed. L. Halphen (Paris 1981), pp. 22–8, trans. L. Thorpe as Life of Charlemagne (London 1969), pp. 61–4; M. McCormick, ‘The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator, 15 (1984), 1–23.
13. King, Charlemagne, pp. 78, 112; cf. Walafrid Strabo c.840/2 for St Martin’s cappa, De Exordiis et Incrementis, MGH, Capitularia, ii (Hanover 1890), 515; and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. L. Thorpe (London 1969), p. 96.
14. P. Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (Oxford 1985), pp. 189, 255, 276–7; cf. K. Leyser, ‘Early Medieval Canon Law and the Beginnings of Knighthood’, Communications and Power in Medieval Europe, i, ed. T. Reuter (Woodbridge 1994); J. Nelson, ‘Ninth Century Knighthood; the Evidence of Nithard’, Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. A. Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill et al. (Woodbridge 1989).
15. Godman, Poetry, pp. 128–9, 300–301, 302–3.
16. MGH, Epistolarum, v (Berlin 1898), p. 601 s.a. 853; vii (Berlin 1912), pp. 126–7, no. 150; Erdmann, Origin, p. 27.
17. Annales Fuldenses, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SS (Hanover 1891), p. 120, a. 891; C. J. Tyerman, England and the Crusades 1095–1588 (Chicago 1988), p. 10 and note 4 for Alfred.
18. Abbo of St Germain, De bello Parisiaco, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS (Hanover 1871), pp. 9–10, bk I, ll. 108–10; trans. Godman, Poetry, p. 313; for the Benedict story, Adelarius, Miraculi S. Benedicti, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SS, xv–i (Hanover 1887), 499–500.
19. The Dream of the Rood, ed. B. Dickins and A. S. C. Ross (London 1954), pp. 20–35.
20. G. R. Murphy, The Saxon Saviour (New York/Oxford 1989), esp. pp. 6, 19–20, 58, 62, 65, 70, 71 et seq., 98, 99, 102–3, 105, 106, 109–10, 113.
21. English Historical Documents, i, ed. D. Whitelock (London 1955), 293–7.
22. La Chanson d’Antioche, ed. S. Duparc-Quioc (Paris 1977–8), i, 25–8 for passage; extracts J. and L. Riley-Smith, Crusades, pp. 72–3.
23. Aelfric, Lives of the Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, Early English Text Society (London 1890), ii, ll. 688–704; cf. 966 foundation charter of King Edgar for New Minster, Winchester, quoted in R. W. Southern, Western Church and Society in the Middle Ages (London 1970), pp. 224–5 and similar views of the emperor, Louis the Pious, in 817, MGH, Capitularia, i, 349–51.
24. Aelfric, Saints, ii, 66–143, 324–5; Maccabees ll. 681–2 for quotation; Abbo of Fleury, Passio Sancti Eadmundi, in Carolla Sancti Edmundi: the Garland of St Edmund King and Martyr, ed. and trans. Lord F. Hervey (London 1907), esp. pp. 20, 26, 30, 32.
25. P. Rousset, ‘L’idéal chevaleresque dans deux Vitae clunisienne’, Etudes de civilisation médiévale, Mélanges offerts à E. R. Labande (Poitiers 1974), pp. 623–33; PL, 133, esp. cols. 647–8.
26. Ralph Glaber, Historarium Libri Quinti, ed. J. France (Oxford 1989), p. 61.
27. H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Peace and Truce of God in the Eleventh Century’, Past and Present, xlvi (1970), 53 and, in general, 42–67; cf. a contrary perspective based on evidence from the Limousin, M. G. Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade (Oxford 1993).
28. The Penitentiary of Ermenfrid bishop of Sitten is translated by D. C. Douglas, English Historical Documents, ii (London 1963), 606–7; for Burchard of Worms, Decretum Libri XX, PL, cxl, esp. bk VI, De Homicidiis, e.g. chap. 23; cf. J. Gilchrist, ‘The Erdmann Thesis and the Canon Law’, Crusade and Settlement, ed. P. Edbury (Cardiff 1985), pp. 3–45.
29. Bonizo of Sutri, Liber de Vita Christiana, ed. E. Perels (Berlin 1930), esp. bk II, cc. 3, 43; bk III, c. 89; bk VII, c. 28; bk X, c. 79, pp. 35, 56, 101, 248–9, 336; cf. H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII and the Bearing of Arms’, Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of H. E. Mayer, ed. B. Kedar, J. Riley-Smith, R. Hiestand (Aldershot 1997), pp. 21–35; I. S. Robinson, ‘Gregory VII and the Soldiers of Christ’, History, lviii (1973), 161–92.
30. Gregory VII to people of the archdiocese of Ravenna, 11 Dec. 1080, trans. E. Emerton, The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII (New York 1969), p. 165.
31. Benzo of Alba, Ad Heinricum IV. imperatorem, ed. H. Seyffert (Hanover 1996), pp. 240, 242, 248 (‘Cornefredus’), 300 (‘Grugnefredus’).
32. Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. M. ChIbnall (Oxford 1969–80), iii, 216, 226, 260–62.
33. Emerton, Correspondence of Gregory VII, pp. 23, 25–6, 33, 39, 56–8, 60–61 for translations of some, but not all, the relevant letters of 1074 (cf. p. 165 for the 1080 reference to the ‘enemies of the Cross of Christ’); Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII and Bearing of Arms’, esp. p. 30 and note 35 for refs. to Gregory’s Register, especially Gregory VII, Regestrum, ed. E. Caspar, MGH, Epistolae Selectae, 2, i–ii (Berlin 1920–23), bk I, nos. 46, 49; bk II, nos. 31, 37, pp. 69–71, 75–6, 165–8, 172–3; The Epistolae vagantes of Pope Gregory VII, ed. and trans. H. E. J. Cowdrey (Oxford 1972), no. 5, pp. 10–13; Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’s “Crusading” Plans of 1074’, Outremer, ed. B. Kedar, H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem 1982), pp. 27–40.
34. Chanson de Roland, v. 1015.
35. William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, lxiii (Turnhout 1986), bk I, cc. 1–2, pp. 105–7 (Rubric to first chapter: ‘Quod tempore Eraclii… Homar… universam occupaverit Syriam’). Runciman, History of the Crusades, i, 3–5 has a famous purple passage on the fall of Jerusalem in 638; cf. a controversial alternative vision, P. Cronne and M. Cook, Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge 1977), p. 51; for a conventional account, L. V. Vaglieri, ‘The Patriarchal and Umayyad Caliphates’, Cambridge History of Islam, ed. P. M. Holt et al. (Cambridge 1970), i, 62. Umar must have cut a striking figure; huge, with a long beard, he used to patrol the streets of Medina wielding a bullwhip.
36. R. Fletcher, Moorish Spain (London 1992), p. 75.
37. Storia de’ Normanni di Amato di Montecassino, ed. V. de Bartholomaeis (Rome 1935), v. 12, p. 234; quoted in C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy (Oxford 1989), p. 142 and, for this period in general, pp. 79–153.
38. Epistolae pontificum Romanorum ineditae, ed. S. Löwenfeld (Leipzig 1885), no. 82, p. 43; Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII and Bearing of Arms’, p. 28, note 31; Bull, Knightly Piety, pp. 72–8; A. Ferreiro, ‘The Siege of Barbastro’, Journal of Medieval History, ix (1983), 133–5.
39. Glaber, Historiarum, pp. 134–7; for Sergius’s bull, Morris, Papal Monarchy, p. 146–7 and note 16; cf. A. Gieysztor, ‘The Genesis of the Crusades: the Encyclical of Sergius IV’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 5 (1949), 3–23, and 6 (1950), 3–34; for a Muslim view of western pilgrims c.1047 Naser-e Khosraw, Book of Travels (Saparnama), trans. W. M. Thackston Jnr (New York 1986), pp. 21, 35, 37–8.
40. Ademar of Chabannes, Chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain, Opera Omnia, i, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, cxxix (Turnhout 1999), bk III, cc. 38, 39, 45, 47, 52, 55, 65, 68, 69, pp. 159, 160, 165–7, 171, 174, 184, 188–9.
41. Glaber, Historiarum, pp. 37, 61, 83, 84–5, 118–21, 194–5, 196, 198–205, 206–7, 208–9, 212–15.
42. See discussion by J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London 1986), pp. 18–19 and notes 27, 29; Gregory VII, Regestrum, bk II, no. 37, p. 173.
2: The Summons to Jerusalem
1. Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronica, MGHS, vi, p. 368.
2. Modern literature on the First Crusade is very extensive; for recent works in English in particular see Riley-Smith, First Crusade; idem, The First Crusaders 1095–1131 (Cambridge 1997); J. France, Victory in the East (Cambridge 1994); Runciman, History of the Crusades, vol. i remains a compelling read.
3. Raymond of Aguilers, Historia, trans. J. H. and L. L. Hill, p. 15.
4. The phrase is that of the anonymous Gesta Francorum, ed. and trans. R. Hill (Oxford 1972), p. 1.
5. Bernold of St Blasien, Chronicon, MGHS, v. p. 462; for Alexius and the West, see esp. J. Shepard, ‘Aspects of Byzantine Attitudes and Policy Towards the West’, Byzantium and the West c. 850–c. 1200, ed. J. D. Howard-Johnston (Amsterdam 1988), pp. 102–18.
6. Bernold of St Blasien, Chronicon, p. 462.
7. R. Somerville, ‘The Council of Clermont’, in Papacy, Councils and Canon Law (London 1990), VII, p. 58 and passim; cf. ibid. V, ‘French Councils of Pope Urban II’ and VIII, ‘The Council of Clermont and the First Crusade’; for Baldwin, Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitana, RHC Occ., iv, 626.
8. Annales S. Benigni Divionensis, MGHS, v, p. 43; Annales Besuensis (i.e. Blaise near Dijon), MGHS, ii, 250. For Urban’s itinerary, A. Becker, Papst Urban II (Stuttgart 1064–88), ii, 435–57.
9. Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 136–8; W. Wiederhold, ‘Papsturkunden in Florenz’, Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft des Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Göttingen 1901), pp. 313–14; Fulk IV of Anjou, Gesta Andegavensium peregrinorum, RHC Occ., v, 345–6; Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronica, p. 367.
10. H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Urban II and the Idea of the Crusade’, Studi Medievali, 3rd series, 36 (1995), 737–8; Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. L. Halphen et al. (Paris 1913), pp. 100–101.
11. Geoffrey abbot of Vendôme, Epistolae, no. XXI, PL, clvii, col. 162; J. and L. Riley-Smith, Crusades, p. 38 for translation of Flemish letter; for the Clermont decrees, R. Somerville, The Councils of Urban II, i: Decreta Claromontensia (Amsterdam 1972) and above, note 7; J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima Collectio, xx (Venice 1775), cols. 816–19.
12. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors et al., i (Oxford 1998), pp. 593–4.
13. For a vivid reconstruction of Clermont, Runciman, History of the Crusades, pp. 107–8 and p. 108, note 1 for refs.
14. Gerald of Wales, Journey Through
Wales, trans. L. Thorpe (London 1978), p. 75.
15. Hagenmeyer, Kreuzzugsbriefe, pp. 137–8; Vita Altmanni episcopi Pataviensis, MGHS, xii, 230; cf. Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, pp. 62–3, 81–3, 97. For penance and pilgrimage in crusade charters, ibid., esp. chaps. 3 and 4 and idem, First Crusade, esp. chap. 2.
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