A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 (13 page)

During the next decade relations slightly
improved. Michael Cerularius was deposed in 1059. Soon after his disappearance
the Latin churches in Constantinople were reopened. In southern Italy the
growing success of the Normans, since 1059 the faithful allies of the Papacy,
made it impracticable for Byzantium to press its ecclesiastical claims there.
In 1061 Roger the Norman embarked on the conquest of Sicily from the Arabs, a
holy war encouraged by the Pope. There too Byzantium had to face the loss of
the control of the Christian congregations. By 1073 the Emperor Michael VII
decided that a cordial understanding with Rome must be achieved. After the
Norman conquest of Bari in 1071 he feared further aggression, which papal
influence might prevent. The Turcoman irruption into Asia Minor had begun.
Michael was in desperate need of soldiers; and recruitment in the West would be
eased if the Papacy were cordial. In 1073 the Cardinal Hildebrand, already
famed for his vigour and integrity, was elected Pope under the name of Gregory
VII. Gregory was convinced of the supremacy of his see and therefore omitted to
send a systatic letter to any of the Patriarchs of the East. But Michael
thought it prudent to make a friendly gesture. He sent the new Pope a letter of
congratulations, hinting at his wish for a closer connection. Pleased, Gregory
sent Dominicus, Patriarch of Grado, as legate to Constantinople to report on
conditions there.

Gregory VII’s
Scheme for a Crusade

Informed by Dominicus, Gregory convinced
himself that Michael was sincere. He also learnt of the situation in Asia
Minor. This bore seriously on the pilgrim traffic. Palestine itself was not yet
closed to pilgrims; but the journey thither across Anatolia would soon be
impossible if the Turcoman invasions were not checked. In a stroke of
imaginative statesmanship Gregory planned a new policy. The holy war, which was
being so successfully waged in Spain, should be extended into Asia. His friends
in Byzantium were in need of military aid. He would send them an army of
Christian knights, under the orders of the Church. And on this occasion,
because there were ecclesiastical problems to solve, the Pope would lead them
in person. His troops would drive the infidel out of Asia Minor; and he would
then hold a council at Constantinople where the Christians of the East would
resolve their quarrels in grateful humility and acknowledge the supremacy of
Rome.

Whether the Emperor Michael knew of the Pope’s
intention and whether he would have welcomed it we cannot tell. For Gregory was
never able to carry his scheme into effect. The unyielding integrity of his
policy led him further and further into trouble in the West. His eastern
ambitions had to be abandoned. But he never forgot them nor lost his interest
there.

In 1078 Michael VII was deposed. On hearing the
news Gregory had at once excommunicated the usurper, Nicephorus Boteniates. A
short time afterwards an adventurer appeared in Italy declaring that he was the
fallen Emperor. The Normans for a while affected to believe in him; and Gregory
lent him his support. When Nicephorus in his turn was replaced in April 1081 by
Alexius Comnenus, the excommunication was extended to the new Emperor. In June
Alexius wrote to the Pope seeking to recover his goodwill and to secure his
help in restraining the aggression of Robert Guiscard; but there was no
response. The Emperor found a more promising ally in Henry IV of Germany. In
the meantime he closed the Latin churches in Constantinople. It seemed clear to
the Byzantines that the Pope was in league with the treacherous and godless
Normans. They told each other fantastic stories of his pride and lack of
charity; and when he died, caught in the net of disasters woven by his policy,
they welcomed the news as a judgement from on high.

In 1085, the year of Gregory’s death, relations
between eastern and western Christendom had never before been so cold. The
eastern Emperor had been excommunicated by the Pope, who was openly encouraging
unscrupulous adventurers to attack their fellow-Christians; while the Pope’s
chief enemy, the king of Germany, was openly receiving subsidies from the
Byzantines. Bitterness and resentment were growing on either side. But there
was as yet no actual schism. Statesmanship might still preserve the unity of
Christendom. In the Emperor Alexius the East possessed a statesman of
sufficient elasticity and wisdom. A statesman of similar calibre was now to
arise in the West.

The Accession of
Urban II

Odo de Lagery was born of a noble family in
Chatillon-sur-Marne in about the year 1042. For his education he was sent to
the cathedral school at Reims, where his headmaster was Saint Bruno, later the founder
of the Carthusian Order. He stayed on at Reims, to become canon, then
archdeacon of the cathedral; but it did not satisfy him. Suddenly he decided to
retire to the community at Cluny. In 1070 he was professed by the abbot Hugh,
who recognized his ability. After acting for a while as prior he was
transferred to Rome. He soon made his mark there; and in 1078 Gregory VII
appointed him Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia. From 1082 to 1085 he was legate in
France and in Germany and came back to remain with Gregory during the last
unhappy years of his pontificate. On Gregory’s death in exile, with the
anti-Pope Guibert reigning in Rome, the loyal cardinals elected in his stead
the weak unwilling abbot of Monte Cassino, who took the name of Victor III. The
Cardinal of Ostia disapproved of the election and showed his disapproval. But
Victor bore him no malice, and on his death-bed, in September 1087, recommended
him to the cardinals as his successor. Gregory VII also was known to have
wished for his succession; but it was not till March 1088 that a conclave could
meet at Terracina, to elect him as Urban II.

Urban was well fitted for his task. He was an
impressive man, tall, with a handsome, bearded face, courteously mannered and
persuasive in his speech. If he lacked the fire and singleness of purpose of
Gregory VII, he excelled him in breadth of vision and in the handling of men.
Nor was he as proud nor as obstinate as Gregory; but he was not weak. He had
suffered imprisonment in Germany at the hands of Henry IV for his loyalty to
the Pope and to his beliefs. He could be stem and relentless, but he preferred
to be gentle; he preferred to avoid controversy that might arouse bitterness
and strife.

He came into a difficult heritage. He could
live safely only in Norman territory; and the Normans were selfish, unreliable
allies. Rome was held by the anti-Pope Guibert. Urban might penetrate to the
suburbs, but he could not go further without bloodshed; and that he refused to
provoke. Further north Matilda of Tuscany staunchly supported him throughout
her vast domains; and in 1089 she strengthened her position by a cynical
marriage with a German prince, Welf of Bavaria, a boy of less than half her
age. But in 1091 her troops were routed by Henry of Germany at the battle of
Trisontai. Henry was at the height of his power. Crowned emperor by the
anti-Pope in 1084, he was now master of Germany and triumphant in northern
Italy. A Pope as insecurely placed as Urban could not hope to command obedience
further afield.

But Urban worked on steadily and tactfully,
till in 1093 all was changed. By the use of money rather than of arms, he was
enabled to spend Christmas that year in Rome and next spring took up his
residence in the Lateran. The emperor Henry was weakened by the revolt of his own
son, Conrad, whose dissatisfaction Urban had quietly encouraged. In France, his
native country, he succeeded, by his powers of organization, in bringing the
whole ecclesiastical structure under his control. In Spain his influence was
supreme; and gradually the more distant countries of the West came to recognize
his spiritual authority. He omitted to press the claims for political
suzerainty made by Gregory VII. With the lay princes everywhere, except with
his outspoken enemies, he showed forbearance stretched to its utmost limits. By
1095 he was spiritual master of western Christendom.

Theophylact of
Bulgaria

Meanwhile he had turned his attention to
eastern Christendom. On Robert Guiscard’s death his brother, Roger of Sicily,
had emerged as the chief power amongst the Normans; and Roger had no wish
further to offend Byzantium. With his goodwill, Urban opened negotiations with
the Byzantine court. At the Council of Melfi, in September 1089, in the
presence of ambassadors from the Emperor, he lifted the ban of excommunication
against Alexius. Alexius responded to this gesture by holding that same month a
synod at Constantinople; where it was found that the Pope’s name had been
omitted from the diptychs ‘not by any canonical decision but, as it were, from
carelessness’, and it was proposed that it should be restored on the receipt of
a systatic letter from the Pope. There was no real cause, the synod considered,
for any dispute between the Churches, and it recommended that the Patriarchs of
Alexandria and Jerusalem should be consulted. The Patriarch of Antioch was
present in person. The Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople wrote to Urban
to inform him of these decisions and to ask him to send his systatic letter
within eighteen months. He assured him that the Latin churches in
Constantinople were free to follow their own usages. No mention was made of any
theological issue. This was not to the liking of the Emperor’s ambassadors in
Italy, Basil, Metropolitan of Trani, and Romanus, Archbishop of Rossano, Greek
clerics who were alarmed by papal encroachments into their territory and who
had been shocked when the Pope claimed, with some historical justification,
that his diocese ought really to include Thessalonica. They would have
preferred Alexius to support the anti-Pope. But Alexius had decided which was
the better man and was realist enough to accept the loss of Byzantine Italy;
while Guibert soon offended his Greek friends by holding a council at Rome
which condemned clerical marriage.

Urban did not in fact ever send a systatic
letter, probably because he was unwilling to raise questions of theology; nor
was his name ever inserted into the Constantinople diptychs. But good relations
were restored. An embassy from Alexius visited Urban in 1090, bearing a message
of cordial friendship. The official Byzantine point of view was shown in a
treatise written by Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria. He begged his readers
not to exaggerate the importance of uniformity in usage. He regretted the
addition of the word
filioque
to the Creed, but explained that the
poverty of the Latin language in theological terms was apt to cause
misunderstanding. He did not take seriously the papal claim of authority over
the eastern churches. Indeed, there was no reason at all why a schism should
ever develop. Other eastern theologians continued to discuss differences in
usage; but their polemics were mild in tone. Among these writers was the
Patriarch of Jerusalem, Symeon II, who condemned the Latin use of unleavened
bread in the Communion, but in terms that were in no way acrimonious.

Early in 1095 Pope Urban II moved northward
from Rome and summoned representatives of all the western Church to meet him at
the first great council of his pontificate, to be held in March at Piacenza.
There the assembled clergy passed decrees against simony and clerical marriages
and against schism within the Church. The adultery of King Philip of France was
discussed; but it was decided to take no action till Urban himself could visit
France. Messengers came from the emperor Henry’s son, Conrad, to arrange for
his meeting with the Pope at Cremona. Henry’s empress, Praxedis of Russia, of
the Scandinavian house that ruled at Kiev, arrived in person to tell of the
indignities that she suffered at the hands of her husband. The Council acted as
the supreme court of western Christendom, with the Pope as presiding judge.

The Council of
Piacenza

Amongst the visitors attending the Council were
envoys from the Emperor Alexius. His wars against the Turks were faring well.
Seldjuk power was in an obvious decline. A few well-timed campaigns might break
it for ever. But his Empire was still short of soldiers. The old Anatolian
recruiting grounds were disorganized and many of them lost. He was largely
dependent on foreign mercenaries, on regiments composed of Petchenegs and other
tribes from the steppes, which he used mainly as frontier guards and military
police, on the Varangian Guard, still mainly filled by Anglo-Saxon exiles from
Norman England, and on companies of adventurers from the West who took
temporary service in his army. Most eminent of these had been Count Robert I of
Flanders, who had fought for him in the year 1090. But, even with the native
troops that he still could raise, his needs were unsatisfied. He had the long
Danube frontier to guard against attacks from the northern barbarians. On the
north-west the Serbs were restive; and his Bulgarian subjects were seldom
quiescent for long. There was always the danger of Norman aggression from
Italy. In Asia Minor the defence of the ill-defined frontier and its outposts
and the general maintenance of order and communications used up his remaining
resources. If he were to take the offensive he must have more recruits. His
policy towards the Papacy would bear fruit if he could use papal influence to
find him these recruits. Urban was sympathetic. It was part of the papal
programme to persuade the quarrelsome knights of the West to use their arms in
a distant and a holier cause. The Byzantine ambassadors were invited to address
the assembly.

Their speeches have not survived. But it seems
that, in order to convince their audience that it was meritorious to serve
under the Emperor, they laid special emphasis on the hardships that the
Christians of the East must endure till the infidel was driven back. If
recruitment was to be encouraged by the Church, the inducement of good pay was
insufficient. The appeal to Christian duty made a stronger argument. It was not
the moment for an exact appraisal of Byzantine achievements and intentions. But
let the bishops return to their homes believing that the safety of Christendom
still was threatened, and they would be eager to send members of their flocks
eastward to fight in the Christian army.