The Nature and Development of the Crusades
In 1095, a speech from Pope Urban II responded to the cries of help from the Byzantine emperor Alexius I and it launched a campaign to retake Jerusalem. This campaign and others similar to it became known as “Crusades”, which are rich in complexity and have been subject of re-interpretation over the years and reflect a lot about religious identity. This complex series of historical events has created problems for the historian as the Medievalist Christopher Tyerman points out, “Historically, the study of the Crusades has usually been marked by prejudice, bias, and judgementalism. Very little surviving primary evidence is without inherent distortion. Later interpretations have consistently reflected the concerns of the historians rather than objective assessment of the phenomenon” (145). In this paper, I will seek to answer the question of whether the Crusades were offensive or defensive and their relevance for the Church today. First, there will be an exploration as to the definition of a ‘crusade’ and how to count each of the various crusades which seem to defy a simple definition while then proceeding to give a historical overview of the two major Crusades: the First and the Fourth Crusade and the relevant minor Crusades. After considering these complexities, it will be argued that because of these difficulties, the crusades defy simple categorization and moral judgment although they can be assessed as to their relevance for today.
The first preliminary issue that needs discussion is what a ‘crusade’ is and why anyone would want to get involved in crusading. Crusade historian Thomas Madden states the following in his work, The Concise History of the Crusades, “The modern word ‘crusade’ derives from cruce signati (‘those signed by the cross’), a descriptive term used occasionally after the twelfth century to refer to crusaders” (12), and in regards to this, Tyerman also states, “…Urban instituted the ceremonial granting of crosses to those who had sworn to undertake the Jerusalem journey. Thus, they became ‘signed with the cross’” (12). So, a crusade in general could be anyone who took up the sword to carry out the objectives of war authorized by the Pope who, “…offered to those who undertook it full remission of the penalties of confessed sins and a package of related temporal privileges, including church protection of family and property, immunity from law suits and interest repayments on debt. The beneficiary earned these grants by swearing a vow symbolized in a ritual adoption of a cross…” (Tyerman, 16). This broad definition will be important for the analysis as one will discover that the crusades are complex and that this definition will apply to different situations and different goals. But even the definition will get complicated as Christopher Tyerman goes on to say, “Although details of the operation of the vow and its associated privileges developed over the following century or more to cover a multiplicity of political and ecclesiastical concerns, the…original justification for such a holy war in 1095 was the recovery of Jerusalem from Muslim rule” (16). This original aim was a remarkable innovation by the pope Urban II as the historian Thomas Asbridge explains, “Urban’s genius was to construct the idea of ‘crusading’ within the framework of existing practice, thus ensuring that, in eleventh-century terms at least, the connection he established between warfare and salvation made clear, rational sense” (The Crusades, 38), but we must also recognize what ‘crusading’ was not because, “It is a popular misconception that crusading was a form of forceful evangelism. In fact, to begin with a least, religious conversion was not an essential element of crusading ideology” (Asbridge, 38). This original intention and its subsequent evolution will be an essential element in the analysis. It is also important to recognize that this is truly in innovation within Christendom from Urban II in the following sense as one of the world’s leading scholars on the Crusades, Jonathan Riley-Smith, explains, “Crusading drew on the traditions of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, whether as a penance or a devotion, and of pious violence. These traditions did not merge gradually together, but were fused by Pope Urban II in 1095. He was able to do this because the radical idea that war could be penitential had surfaced in Gregorian circles… The First Crusade was, therefore, a truly revolutionary event…” (The First Crusaders, 189).
The last preliminary issue is the complicated topic of how historians count the Crusades and separate the major wars from the others. The issue of counting the Crusades was a later development which helped historians keep it consistent but, “In doing so they run the risk of becoming imprisoned by their own artifice. Between 1095 and, say, 1500 there were scores of military operations that attracted the privileges associated with the wars of the cross. Yet only a few later became known by a number, all of them aimed at Muslim targets in and around Syria and Palestine in the eastern Mediterranean” (Tyerman 16). Thus the rationale behind the numbering was due to the fact that those who provoked the second crusade, “invoked the precedent of 1095-6, casting into shadow smaller expeditions that had embarked to aid the Christian cause in the east in the interim. Thus…the 1146 crusade became the Second Crusade. Subsequent numbering followed suit, attached only to general, large-scale international assaults intended to reach the Holy Land. Hence the inclusion in the canon of the Fourth Crusade (1202-4)” (17-18). So, we see that the numbering system was invented mainly due to the goal of the army and it was also related to the standards which were set by those who went on the “First Crusade”. In addition to these main campaigns, there were related campaigns that were different:
“Other crusades are defined by objective, location, participants or motives… the Albigensian Crusades describe the wars against religious heretics in southern France… The Baltic Crusades were campaigns launched against local pagan tribes of the region… The Peasants’…, Children’s…, and Shepherd’s… Crusades speak for themselves…” (17-18). There were also smaller crusades that were too insignificant to be mentioned and even some controversy as to whether there should be a sixth, seventh, and even eighth crusade, but we will stick to five major crusades which is the standard for most historians (Tyerman, 18).
First, it is necessary to give a historical overview of the Crusades by starting with the first five major crusades. The first Crusade was called by Urban II at the Council of Clermont on the 27th of November although we have different accounts of his speeches and not his original words.
There have been historical problems noted with some of these accounts and whether they reproduce Urban’s actual speech. Cf. Robert Somerville’s The Councils of Urban II, Volume I. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972. For a discussion of the problems surrounding especially Fulcher of Chartres’ account and other Chroniclers. Despite this issue, what we do know is that Urban, “began where Gregory had left off. He called the knights of Christ to take up a war of liberation. The Christians of the East must be free from the brutal and humiliating conditions of Muslim rule” (Madden, 18). The main men who were recruited to fight numbered, “between 50,000 and 70,000, excluding the non-combatant pilgrims who used the military exodus as protection for their own journeys” (Tyerman, 22). This first army had forces from many different areas and were lead by Peter the Hermit who attracted many with his crusade sermons. There was also another army led by Walter Sansavoir who would promise to arrive at Constantinople to help Peter and they did after a long travel although it was a few weeks a part (Madden, 26-28). Unfortunately, there was some divisions about what to do as many of the crusaders went to engage the Turks, but they were eventually destroyed along with Watler Sansavoir and Peter ended up as the only one left who returned to Constantinople as, “There was nothing for him to do but enjoy the emperor’s hospitality while awaiting the arrival of the main body of the crusade” (Madden, 29). After more forces arrived, the campaign would take off as they captured Nicaea in June of 1097 and eventually came to win a stunning victory at Antioch against a much bigger Muslim army in June 1098 which impacted the psyche of the Crusaders as “the depleted western army increasingly regarded themselves as under the special care of God, a view reinforced by visions, the apparently miraculous discovery at Antioch of the Holy Lance that was said to have pierced Christ’s side on the Cross and the victory a few days later…” (Tyerman, 23). Then from January to June of 1099, they headed to Jerusalem where they were ultimately successful by July (24-26). The Fourth Crusade was launched by Pope Innocent III who, for many religious reasons, had the primary goal of taking back the Holy land and so, “One of the first things he did was to proclaim a new eastern expedition in August 1198” (36). Unfortunately, this crusade would be remembered as the one that did not go the way the Pope wanted it to go as circumstances circumvented the attempted journey to the Holy Land. The problem started when the crusaders needed transportation from Venice, but they could not pay what they were supposed to pay and, so they were trapped. This is where the Crusade would take a turn away from the original objective to pay their debts as, “…a solution, the doge, Enrico Dandolo (d.1205), offered a moratorium on the debt in return for the crusaders’ help in capturing the port of Zara in Dalmatia, even though this was a Christian city belonging to a fellow crusader… Despite evident qualms and papal disapproval, the crusaders had little option if they wished to pursue their ultimate objective” (Tyerman, 37). This was not the only diversion in the Fourth Crusade because after Zara was taken on November of 1202, another expedition, this time to Constantinople was prompted by Alexius who was the son of a deposed Byzantine emperor named Isaac II. Although some of the crusaders, on principle, rejected Alexius’ offer, the leader and most of the army would assist him when, “Young Alexius promised to subsidize the crusaders’ attack on Egypt if they helped him take the Byzantine throne from his usurping uncle Alexius III (1195-1203)” (37). The crusaders were about to find out that they made a major mistake as the Historian Norman Housley states, “…but when they’d place him in power, in July 1203, he found that he couldn’t honour his promises. Nor did he think that he needed to. In November relations between Alexios IV and his erstwhile allies collapsed into open hostility” (Fighting For The Cross, 15). Soon after Alexios was overthrown, they realized that, “There was no alternative to mounting another assault on Constantinople’s walls” (15), and so they, “…stormed the city, proceeding to install a Latin emperor and patriarch there” (15). Soon after this, there was an abrupt end to this crusade as many stayed in Constantinople and some went home, but it was clear that they had never even made an attempt to go to the Holy Land like they promised. The fifth and final crusade is complex as some considered the event of, “Frederick II of Germany’s crusade in 1228-9 that briefly restored Jerusalem as the Sixth Crusade; others as the last campaign of the Fifth Crusade summoned in 1213” (Tyerman, 18), but we will treat all the events as the fifth crusade. The fifth crusade was launched by Innocent III who tried new recruitment strategies by promising an indulgence for those who would help finance the crusade and as a result he sparked, “…a series of expeditions to the east between 1217 and 1229. The first expedition around 1217 wanted to focus on Egypt and so they planned an assault on the port of Damietta which they were able to take only after suffering costly losses. The crusaders suffered from internal turmoil as they wouldn’t communicate effectively with their leaders and so in 1221 when they decided to move towards Cairo, they went in without recognizing that the Nile flood would get in the way. After the flood trapped them and they tried to flee, the Egyptians were successful in slaughtering most of the crusaders who were then forced to give up Damietta (38-39). The other expedition was the one of Frederick II who moved toward the Holy Land around 1228. Frederick took advantage of some internal turmoil between the rulers of Egypt and Syria and eventually in 1229 he, “…agreed to a treaty with the sultan of Egypt that restored Jerusalem to the Franks. The city was to be open to all and the Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount, to remain under the Islamic religious authorities. However, unpopular for his high-handedness, when Frederick embarked for the west from Acre on 1 May 1229 he was pelted with offal” (Tyerman, 39). Despite another bold attempt by Louis IX from 1248-1251 to take down Egypt, the crusades would ultimately end in disaster as the last outposts of the Crusaders like Tripoli, Antioch, and Acre would all be cut off from them by 1291 (40-41).
Other than these major crusades, it is worth mentioning briefly the other crusades that were of a different nature. One of the other types of Crusades around this time period has been classified by historians as the Crusades against heretics, the most well-known being the Albigensian Crusades around 1209-1229. This centered around the Cathar heresy which was around Languedoc. The heresy was growing strong and it was ultimately the, “…assassination of the Papal Legate for the region in 1208 [that] led Innocent III to offer Holy Land indulgences and the cross to northern French barons” (44, [] mine), and so under the monk Arnald-Amaury and Simon de Montfort, “…the crusaders began to annex the county of Toulouse and its surrounding provinces, often with great savagery meted out indiscriminately to local Christians as well as heretics… After Simon’s death in 1218, the impetus of the crusade faltered until revived by King Louis VIII of France… By the end of the year Languedoc had effectively been conquered…” (44). The last major type of Crusade was the so-called Baltic Crusades which was essentially part of a, “cruel process of Christianization and Germanization, providing a religious gloss to ethnic cleansing and territorial aggrandizement” (47), and it extended after 1200 to places like, “Prussia, Livonia, Estonia, and Finland” (47). The nature of these crusades that ultimately were used to convert pagans fell into the hands of the Teutonic Knights who eventually acquired the right to, “…grant crusade indulgences without special papal authorization. This gave the Teutonic Knights a unique status, not held even by the rulers of the kingdom of Jerusalem, of a sovereign government possessed of the automatic right of equating its foreign policy with the crusade” (50). As the Knight’s lost the interest of the people, ultimately due to their loss against Lithuania and Poland, that would virtually signal the end of these crusades.
Given this historical overview, before answering the wider question of whether this results in a radical departure from fundamental Christian morality and its implications for the Church today, it would be important to first answer the well-known question of whether the Crusades were defensive or offensive in their character. In answer to this first question, we will look at the calling and actions of the First Crusade as well as the Fourth Crusade and the crusades against heretics and we will see that the whole series of events known as the Crusades really defy categorization. Then, we will examine this movement from the standpoint of Church History as a whole and compare it with Scripture and the Early Church on the subject of war, defense, and morality and then proceed to talk about its relevance for today.
When it comes to the First Crusade, many will focus primarily on the calling of Urban II as one of the primary definitions and the one that provides the necessary elements of what can be adequately called, “A Crusade”. As stated elsewhere, we don’t have the original text of Urban II’s speech at Clermont, but we do have five primary sources that claim to represent his speeches (Peters, 25), and of them all, Fulcher of Chartres’ Chronicle is usually assumed to be the best among all of them. Despite this, many like Robert Somerville have questioned Fulcher’s attendance at the council and he remarks that, “Fulcher might have excerpted items from a list of decrees in his possession and put into the mouth of the pope. No individual participant could have copied accurately an entire synodal address. Fulcher probably was constructing from decrees he possessed a sermon not unlike one Urban could have given at Clermont” (104). Although admitting the unsatisfactory nature of this evidence, Jonathan Riley-Smith admits on the basis of other pieces of primary evidence that we can piece together Urban’s intention in the Crusade which was for, “…men to vow to fight on Christ’s behalf a war of liberation from Muslim tyranny, which related to people – the ‘Church of God’, ‘the eastern churches’, ‘Christianity’, ‘their brothers’ – as much as to a place: the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem” (The First Crusaders, 60-61). Likewise, the British Historian H.E.J. Cowdrey argues that some of the chroniclers purport to have, “…gave the gist of Urban’s words, not an accurate report of them;…” (Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade”, 177), and he renders a similar verdict as Professor Riley-Smith in saying that Urban II’s goal was Jerusalem which was central and the, “Eastern Churches which he desired to free from pagan domination” (188). So, Fulcher is most probably representing Urban accurately when he represents him as saying, “Hastening to the way, you must help your brothers living in the Orient, who need your aid for which they have already cried out many times… …If you permit this supinely for very long, God’s faithful ones will be still further subjected” (Qtd in Peters, 52-53). On the face of it, this seems to be genuinely a defensive war which plans to keep the dignity and Christian faith of Eastern Christians in tact from Islamic aggression, at least that is the perception of Urban II. The Crusade historian Thomas Asbridge has remarked that the question of whether they were defensive, or offensive is a tricky question given that the immediate context of the Crusades lend no evidence that the Muslims wanted to have an all-out war against the West although in one sense they did take primary Christian locations of veneration (26-29). This is certainly correct because we wouldn’t have the kind of outcry among some of the Muslims who preached Jihad after the First Crusade especially those documented by Suleiman Mourad and James Lindsay in their chapter, “Jihad Preaching in Damascus Between the First and Second Crusades” where they state that many from the “Syrian Sunni religious establishment”, believed that the, “Frankish invasion would not have been possible… had Muslim political and military leaders attended to their religious duty of waging jihad against the Christian infidels” (32). Although this is the case, one can properly make the distinction between the objective threat posed in the context of the crusades and what Urban II and his contemporaries perceived to be the threat given their experiences. Asbridge admits that although there was no world-wide threat, nevertheless it was the case that, “Islam undoubtedly had seized Christian territory, including Jerusalem; and Christians living in and visiting the Holy Land may have been subjected to persecution” (28). It is most likely that the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus’ call to Urban for help is one out of genuine concern and that Urban’s goal to help liberate the Eastern Christians is likewise genuine in that he really felt that they were threatened. Although the First Crusade did include attacks on the Jews like the pogroms of Rhineland, we can safely rule out such intentions from Urban II’s intentions for the Crusade as Rebecca Rist, a prominent scholar on the Jews relationship to the Papacy in the Middle ages, comments that, “Although Jews were a minority group who rejected Christianity, popes never authorized crusades against them as they did against Muslim infidels. Rather… they… insisted that Jews be allowed to live unharmed, albeit with limited rights” (Popes and Jews, 101), and she goes on to point out that Popes later one would try to enact policies to deal with the hostility that some crusaders had toward the Jews (102-103). All of the evidence suggests that Urban’s original plan for the First Crusade is primarily initiated for a noble cause in protecting and liberating Eastern Christians, but we can also see that later Crusades don’t fall so easily into this category.
The primary examples of Crusades that don’t seem to fit so neatly into the other categories would be the Fourth Crusade and the so-called Crusades against heretics. As mentioned before, those who embarked on the Fourth Crusade ran into financial and logistical problems when they encountered the Venetians who stipulated a price that they could not pay, and so the only alternative was to help capture the Port of Zara. There have been some who have pointed to this event as the definitive point where one cuts off the Crusade and suggests that the events going forward do not count as a “Crusade” given that it breaks from the original intention of what a Crusade is, and it goes against Papal disapproval. In other words, the attack on the port of Zara and the siege and sack of Constantinople should be dropped from the consideration of even being a Crusade given that they are under Christian control and that Crusades by definition cannot be launched against fellow Christians. The Crusade’s mark on Constantinople is especially disturbing as Donald Queller and Thomas Madden describe some of the horrors that results from the sack, “…the victorious Latins feasted on the bloated corpse of New Rome. The crusading host and the Latin refugees were merged into a hideous mob driven by greed, lust, and hate. Oaths sworn on the Gospels to leave women and ecclesiastical buildings unmolested were forgotten in the frenzied anarchy. Soldiers stripped the homes of all wealth… expelled the owners…” (The Fourth Crusade, 193). While it is probably impossible to pinpoint the reason for such a brutal attack on a Christian city, Jonathan Phillips in his work on the Fourth Crusade posits that there were many personal reasons of various individuals and groups that can explain the motivations behind the Crusades and especially the deal with the Venetians and Alexius that ultimately kept them on the course that they did go on and there was no turning back (The Fourth Crusade, 240-241). Nevertheless, virtually all scholars admit that there were inexcusable atrocities when it came to the sacking of Constantinople and, so it is clearly an offensive assault and an unjust one given the probability of the attacks on non-combatants, but this depends on whether it counts as a Crusade depending on one’s definition. At most we can say that this is not an event sanctioned by the institutionalized Church of the day, but it does represent the fact that there are people who claim to be Christians and claim to be engaged in Holy War that commit terrible acts. Other than the Fourth Crusade, the later Crusades against Heretics have sparked a lot of controversy as well. The example explored here will be the Crusade against the Hussites in Bohemia from 1418-1437. The start of this controversy comes at the end of a very significant controversy in the history of the Church as the Council of Constance finally ends the great western schism where there were rivalries for the claim to the Papacy between 1378 and 1417. This background is necessary as the internal schisms and turmoil within the Church gives indication as to why there was a major response to Bohemia as Thomas Fudge points out, “The crusade against heretics in Bohemia was implemented to avoid permanent schism and to regain control of the church in Bohemia. Rome perceive the movement as rebarbative, heretical, dangerous and requiring more than diplomacy” (The Crusade against Heretics, 3). The combination of the strong resistance from the Hussites in fighting for reform and their capture of orthodox bishops had led to the Crusades called against them which resulted in bloody conflict until it came to an end in a compromise between the moderate Hussites and emperor Sigismund during the years between 1434 and 1436 (4-5). We can get a look at the Catholic perspective in this conflict through Pope Martin V’s anti-Hussite bull Inter Cunctus as provided by Thomas Fudge where those who have been influenced by the heresy are commanded to repent, but he warns many types of officials in the area in regards to those who openly teach this heresy to, “…be banished and cast out now and always until there be a counter order from ecclesiastical judges… and the communion of the holy Church of Rome…. If such publicly known heretics die, even if not specifically denounced by the church, they must not be permitted Christian burial… Their goods or belongings shall be confiscated… at the time of death. The rest of them shall be dealt with by temporal lords… and shall be put to death without delay” (48). This reveals some of the severity and how far the orthodox side was willing to go which also existed on the other side as the punishment for those captured or seen teaching heresy would be given strict punishment or penance and some even killed. Given the unique historical situation, it would seem best to categorize this war as kind of offensive and defensive for both sides as the Catholic side seemed to really believe that this would fragment the Body of Christ in such a crucial time and the Hussites really believed that they had to defend their beliefs and conscience.
Given the data and categorization of these Crusades, the primary thing to learn from these events is whether they are in accordance with Scripture and the Christian tradition. The view defended here is that Scripture gives witness to the Just War tradition and so the morality of the Crusades depends heavily on whether they fulfill the proper conditions of jus ad bellum (i.e., conditions to engage in war), and of jus in bello (i.e., the proper rules of conduct once one is already engaged in war). The First Crusade seems to clearly fall in line with the Just War tradition given that it was called by a recognized authority (The Pope), and it was launched for a just cause. Some have argued that the First Crusade should not be classified in this way within the bounds of genuine aims of a worldly just war. Such a view comes from the historian Jay Rubenstein in his work, Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and The Quest For Apocalypse, who makes the argument that the First Crusade really became an “aggressive and apocalyptic institution” (31), and that by the end of the journey, those crusaders who were done with the pilgrimage also hoped for the, “end of time, which they intended to bring about” (171). At the end of his work, he warns that this illustrates the, “…dangers of holy war once an army or the authority behind an army chooses to believe that its goals align with God’s” (325). But as Crusade scholar Paul Chevedden points out in his review of Rubenstein’s book, it seems more logical to suppose that apocalyptic speculation results from some other cause rather than itself being the cause of crusading in general. It is much more likely that these speculations result from the real origin of crusading and that is in the conflict between Islam and Christianity (843-844). Given all of this data, it seems logical to assume that the First Crusade was launched for a noble cause in protecting other Christians and so counts as a Just war. However, I would say that the Crusades against the heretics could not be put into the category of a Just war because this seems to be more of an internal struggle and concerns a group who wants freedom and although I realize that this is not quite in line with the political thoughts of the day, I don’t believe that it is enough to declare a crusade against. Even given the fact that the Crusade was not called against Islamic aggression makes it doubtful as to whether this can be labelled as a crusade. Some may say that it threatened unity and that they could not sustain themselves without resolving this issue through military means, but that seems to be far from clear as they could have granted them what they wanted without much threat to their power as a whole.
In conclusion, I have argued that the Crusades defy the categories of defensive and offensive wars and that I would categorize some as just and some like the crusade against heretics as unjust. One final word is that this has relevance for ministry and Christian outreach today in the following ways and that is that war is contrary to God’s design, but is sometimes necessary to protect the flourishing of God’s kingdom. But as Jesus and many of the Apostles like Paul warned, this type of use of worldly means to achieve an end can sometimes end in disaster and that the focus should always be on the Gospel which is the true power of God unto salvation.
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