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Adapted from New Advent Catholic Website
The Various Crusades
The origin of the Crusades is directly traceable to the moral and political condition of Western Christendom in the eleventh century. At that time, Europe was divided into numerous states whose sovereigns were absorbed in tedious and petty territorial disputes while the emperor, in theory the temporal head of Christendom, was wasting his strength in the quarrel over Investitures (granting of church offices). The popes alone carried the responsibility for Christian unity; they realised to what extent the interests of Europe were threatened by the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim tribes, and they alone had a foreign policy whose traditions were formed under Leo IX and Gregory VII. The reform effected in the Church and the papacy through the influence of the monks of Cluny had increased the prestige of the Roman pontiff in the eyes of all Christian kingdoms; hence none but the pope could inaugurate the international movement that culminated in the Crusades. But despite his eminence's authority, the pope could never have persuaded the Western peoples to arm themselves for the conquest of the Holy Land had not the immemorial relations between Syria and the West favoured his design.
As early as the eighth century, Anglo-Saxons underwent great hardships to visit Jerusalem. The journey of St. Willibald, Bishop of Eichstädt, took seven years (722-729) and provides an idea of the varied and severe trials to which pilgrims were subject. After their conquest of the West, the Carolingians endeavoured to improve the condition of the Latins settled in the East; in 762 Pepin the Short entered into negotiations with the Caliph of Bagdad. In Rome, on 30 November, 800, the very day on which Leo III invoked the arbitration of Charlemagne, ambassadors from Haroun al-Raschid delivered to the king of the Franks the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, the banner of Jersualem, and some precious relics; this was an acknowledgement of the Frankish protectorate over the Christians of Jerusalem. That churches and monasteries were built at Charlemagne's expense is attested by a sort of a census of the monasteries of Jerusalem dated 808. In 870, at the time of the pilgrimage of Bernard the Monk, these institutions were still very prosperous, and it has been abundantly proved that alms were sent regularly from the West to the Holy Land. In the tenth century, just when the political and social order of Europe was most troubled, knights, bishops, and abbots, actuated by devotion and a taste for adventure, were wont to visit Jerusalem and pray at the Holy Sepulchre without being molested by the Muslims. Suddenly, in 1009, Hakem, the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre and all the Christian establishments in Jerusalem. For years thereafter, Christians were cruelly persecuted. In 1027, the Frankish protectorate was overthrown and replaced by that of the Byzantine emperors, to whose diplomacy was due the reconstruction of the Holy Sepulchre. The Christian quarter was surrounded by a wall, and some Amalfi merchants, vassals of the Greek emperors, built hospices in Jerusalem for pilgrims, e.g. the Hospital of St. John, cradle of the Order of Hospitallers.
Although the memory of Charlemagne's protectorate still lived, and a trace of it is to be found in the medieval legend of this emperor's journey to Palestine. The rise of the Seljukian Turks, however, compromised the safety of pilgrims and even threatened the independence of the Byzantine Empire and of all Christendom. In 1070 Jerusalem was taken, and in 1091 Diogenes, the Greek emperor, was defeated and made captive at Mantzikert. Asia Minor and all of Syria became the prey of the Turks. Antioch succumbed in 1084, and by 1092 not one of the great metropolitan sees of Asia remained in the possession of the Christians. Although separated from the communion of Rome since the schism of Michael Cærularius (1054), the emperors of Constantinople implored the assistance of the popes; in 1073, letters were exchanged on the subject between Michael VII (Costantinople) and Gregory (Rome) VII. The pope seriously contemplated leading a force of 50,000 men to the East in order to re-establish Christian unity, repulse the Turks, and rescue the Holy Sepulchre. But the idea of the crusade constituted only a part of this grandiose plan. The conflict over the Investitures in 1076 compelled the pope to abandon his projects; the Byzantine Emperors Nicephorus Botaniates and Alexius Comnenus were unfavourable to a religious union with Rome. Finally war broke out between the Byzantine Empire and the Normans of the Two Sicilies. It was Pope Urban II who took up the plans of Gregory VII and gave them more definite shape. A letter from Alexius Comnenus to Robert, Count of Flanders, recorded by the chroniclers, Guibert de Nogent and Hugues de Fleury seems to imply that the crusade was instigated by the Byzantine emperor, but this has been proven false. Alexius merely sought to enrol five hundred Flemish knights in the imperial army. The honour of initiating the crusade has also been attributed to Peter the Hermit, a recluse of Picardy, who, after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and a vision in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, went to Urban II and was commissioned by him to preach the crusade. However, though eyewitnesses of the crusade mention his preaching, they do not ascribe to him the all-important role assigned him later by various chroniclers, e.g. Albert of Aix and especially William of Tyre. The idea of the crusade is chiefly attributed to Pope Urban II (1095), and the motives that actuated him are clearly set forth by his contemporaries: "On beholding the enormous injury that all, clergy or people, brought upon the Christian Faith . . . at the news that the Rumanian provinces had been taken from the Christians by them Turks, moved with compassion and impelled by the love of God, he crossed the mountains and descended into Gaul". |
The Crusades were expeditions undertaken, in
fulfilment of a solemn vow, to deliver the Holy Places from
Muslim control. The origin of the word may be traced to
the cross made of cloth and worn as a badge on the outer
garment of those who took part in these enterprises.
Since the Middle
Ages the meaning of the word crusade has been extended to
include all wars undertaken in pursuance of a vow, and
directed against non-Christians, i.e. against pagans, Muslims
heretics, or those under the ban of excommunication. The
wars waged by the Spaniards against the Moors (North African Muslims)
constituted a
continual crusade (the Reconquista) from the eleventh to the
sixteenth century. In the north of Europe crusades were
organised against the Prussians and Lithuanians. The
extermination of the Albigensian heresy in France was due to a
crusade, and, in the thirteenth century the popes preached
crusades against John Lackland and Frederick II. But modern
literature has abused the word by applying it to all wars of
a religious character, as, for instance, the expedition of
Heraclius against the Persians in the seventh century and
the conquest of Saxony by Charlemagne. The idea of the
crusade corresponds to a political conception that was
realised in Christendom only from the eleventh to the
fifteenth centuries; this supposes a union of all peoples and
sovereigns under the direction of the popes. All crusades
were announced by preaching. After pronouncing a solemn vow,
each warrior received a cross from the hands of the pope or
his legates, and was thenceforth considered a soldier of the
Church. Crusaders were also granted indulgences and temporal
privileges, such as exemption from civil jurisdiction,
inviolability of persons or lands, etc. Of all these wars
undertaken in the name of Christendom, the most important
were the Eastern Crusades, which are the only ones treated
in this article.
Europeans listened to the voice of Pope Urban II because
their own inclination and historic traditions impelled them
towards the Holy Sepulchre (the search for Christ's tomb).
From the end of the fifth
century there had been no break in their intercourse with
Asia. In the early Christian period colonies of
Syrians had introduced the religious ideas, art, and culture
of Asia into the large cities of Gaul and Italy. The
Western Christians, in turn, journeyed in large numbers to
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, either to visit the Holy Places
or to follow the ascetic life among the monks of the Thebaid
or Sinai. The itinerary of a
pilgrimage from Bordeaux to Jerusalem was dated from 333. In 385 St.
Jerome and St. Paula founded the first Latin monasteries in
Bethlehem. Even the Muslim invasions did not seem to
dampen the ardour for pilgrimages to the East. The Itinerary
of St. Silvia (Etheria) shows the organisation of these
expeditions, which were directed by clerics and escorted by
armed troops. In the year 600, St. Gregory the Great had a
hospice erected in Jerusalem for the accommodation of
pilgrims, sent alms to the monks of Mount Sinai, and, although the
deplorable condition of Eastern Christendom after the Arab
invasion rendered this intercourse more difficult, it did
not by any means cease.
Instead of diminishing, the enthusiasm of Western
Christians for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem seemed rather to
increase during the eleventh century. Not only princes,
bishops, and knights, but even men and women of the humbler
classes undertook the holy journey.
Whole armies of pilgrims traversed Europe, and in the
valley of the Danube, hospices were established where they
could replenish their provisions. In 1026, Richard, Abbot of
Saint-Vannes, led 700 pilgrims into Palestine at the expense
of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. In 1065, over 12,000 Germans
crossed Europe under the command of Günther,
Bishop of Bamberg. On their way through Palestine they had
to seek shelter in a ruined fortress, where they defended
themselves against a troop of Bedouins. Thus, it is evident
that at the close of the eleventh century, the route to
Palestine was familiar enough to Western Christians who
looked upon the Holy Sepulchre as the most venerable of
relics and were ready to brave any peril in order to visit
it.
