An Empire of Memory (42 page)

Hugh of Vermandois. Urban personally asked Count Fulk of Anjou to join the

expedition when he visited Fulk and likely spoke directly with Count Raymond of

Saint-Gilles as well.78 There was heavy interest in the Rhineland, even though there

is no evidence that anyone from that region met with Urban along his itinerary.79

Peter the Hermit preached the expedition but did not attend Clermont.80

74 See the list in Robert Somerville, ‘The Council of Clermont (1095) and Latin Christian Society’,

Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 12 (1974), 62–80. Somerville also notes that we can only definitively

place about 40% (50/80+) bishops who attended and that we know little of their retinues, which were

certainly quite large and composed of numerous other churchmen. It may have been in these retinues

that the crusade chroniclers Fulcher of Chartres and Robert of Reims attended Clermont.

75 Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony,

c.970–c.1130 (Oxford, 1993), 258–9; Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 75–6; and Tyerman, God’s War,

76–81. Robert Somerville, however, has suggested that overall clerical interest in the crusade may have been slight, hence the relatively few mentions of the expedition in conciliar decrees. See Robert

Somerville, ‘The Council of Clermont and the First Crusade’, Studia Gratiana, 20 (1976), 325.

76 Pryor, ‘View from the Masthead’, 89; Marcus Bull, ‘The Roots of Lay Enthusiasm for the First

Crusade’, History, 78 (1993), 361–3.

77 Patrick Demouy, ‘L’Église de Reims et la croisade aux XIe-XIIe siècles’, in Yvonne Bellenger and

Danielle Quérel (eds.), Les Champenois et la croisade: Actes des quatrièmes journées rémoises, 27–8 novembre 1987 (Paris, 1989), 24; and Healy, Chronicle of Hugh of Flavigny, 70–2. See also the brief discussion in Matthew Gabriele, ‘The Provenance of the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus: Remembering the

Carolingians at the Court of King Philip I (1060–1108) before the First Crusade’,Viator, 39 (2008), 115–16.

78 Augustin Fliche, Le règne de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1060–1108) (Paris, 1912), 58–9. On the

council of war, see Guibert, Dei gesta per Francos, ed. Huygens, 133–4; and the comments of Marcus Bull,

‘The Capetian Monarchy and the Early Crusade Movement: Hugh of Vermandois and Louis VII’,

Nottingham Medieval Studies, 50 (1996), 34. On Fulk, see Fulk le Réchin, Fragmentum Historiae

Andegavensis, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. Louis Halphen and René

Poupardin (Paris, 1913), 237–8. On Raymond, see the summary of the scholarship in Asbridge, First

Crusade, 44–6.

79 Matthew Gabriele, ‘Against the Enemies of Christ: The Role of Count Emicho in the Anti-Jewish

Violence of the First Crusade’, in Michael Frassetto (ed.), Christian Attitudes towards Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook (New York, 2006), 61–82; and Flori, ‘Une ou plusieurs “première croisade”?’, 3–27.

80 Jean Flori, Pierre l’Ermite et la Première Croisade (Paris, 1999); and Jay Rubenstein, ‘How, or

How Much, to Reevaluate Peter the Hermit?’, in Susan Ridyard (ed.), The Medieval Crusade

(Rochester, NY, 2004), 53–69.

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151

We may be able to get a better sense of the message these people heard if we use

Urban’s letters. His letter to the people of Flanders, probably written in late 1095,

asked them to help stop the ‘barbaric madness’ that had ‘laid waste the churches of

God’. Therefore, Urban said that he had asked the principes of Gaul to hasten to

liberate the churches of the East.81 In another letter, written slightly later, Urban

attempted to discourage some Catalonian nobles from going to the East by linking

the struggles against the Saracens in both Iberia and Asia, writing that the whole

populus Christi benefited from their actions to resettle Tarragona. The Catalan

nobility should remain in Iberia because ‘it is of no virtue to rescue Christians from

the Saracens in one place, only to expose them to the tyranny and oppression of the

Saracens in another’. Both those who aided Tarragona and those who aided the

churches of Asia would be equal in God’s eyes.82 A 1096 letter to Urban’s

supporters in Bologna praised them for their steadfastness in the face of so many

schismatics and heretics (supporters of Henry IV and the anti-pope). Therefore

Urban was heartened to hear that many of them had decided to go to Jerusalem in

order to liberate the churches there.83 A fourth letter told the monks of Vallom-

brosa, on the other hand, to stay home. It was not for monks but for soldiers to

make ‘for Jerusalem with the good intention of liberating Christianity. . . . [It is

they who will] restrain the savagery of the Saracens by their arms and restore the

Christians to their former freedom.’84

Even here, we must remain conscious of just how problematic these letters are.85

Overall, there are few common points among them. This is itself an important

point. Urban knew his audiences and seems to have pitched the project according-

ly. To those in Flanders, who may well have known of Count Robert I’s (d. 1093)

recent pilgrimage to Jerusalem and meeting with the Byzantine emperor, Urban

could subtly echo an earlier Byzantine request to Robert for military help. Urban’s

Flemish audience may have also known of Emperor Alexius’ supposed letter, which

may have been a later Latin version of an oral Greek message that reached Flanders

c.1091.86 This redacted letter, in a much more verbose manner, repeated many of

81 Urban II, Ad omnes fideles in Flandria, in Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100, ed.

Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1901), no. 2.

82 ‘Neque enim uirtutuis est alibi a Saracenis christianos eruere, alibi christianos Saracenorum

tyrannidi oppressionique exponere.’ Papsturkunden in Katalanien, ed. Paul Kehr, Abhandlungen der

Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Berlin, 1926), no. 23.

83 Urban II, Ad Bononienses, in Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, ed. Hagenmeyer, no. 3.

84 ‘Nos enim ad hanc expeditionem militum animos instigauimus, qui armis suis Saracenorum

feritatem declinare et christianorum possint libertati pristinae restituere.’ Papsturkunden in Florenz, ed.

W. Wiederhold, Nachrichten von der Königlischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen

(Göttingen, 1901), no. 6.

85 Leaving aside the fact that, as John Pryor reminds us, the three most often cited letters (to the

Flemish, Bolognese, and Vallombrosans) only survive in 18th-cent. copies. John H. Pryor, ‘Review of

Norman Housley: Contesting the Crusades’, Journal of Religious History, 33 (2009), 115.

86 On this journey, see Charles Verlinden, Robert Ier le Frison, comte de Flandre (Paris, 1935), 151–9.

Although most scholars think the letter to be false, François-Louis Ganshof suggested that Emperor Alexius asked for some military help but thought it unlikely––though not impossible––that the letter was genuine.

See François-Louis Ganshof, ‘Robert le Frison et Alexis Comnène’, Byzantion, 31 (1961), 57–74; Michel

de Waha, ‘La Lettre d’Alexis I Comnène à Robert le Frison: Une revision’, Byzantion, 47 (1977), 113–25; and Robert of Reims, History of the First Crusade, tr. Carol Sweetenham (Burlington, Vt., 2005), 215–18.

152

The Franks Recreate Empire

Urban’s themes. The letter of Pseudo-Alexius called on the Flemish to rush to the

defense of the regnum christianorum, the populus Dei, and the eastern churches,

which were suffering mightily under the weight of pagan oppression.87 The core of

this message, repeated to Robert II of Flanders (d. 1111) by Urban II and (perhaps)

Pseudo-Alexius, worked. In late 1096, shortly before his departure, Robert echoed

many of these themes in a charter for Saint-Peter of Lille. Robert said that, at the

behest of the papacy, he was leaving for Jerusalem in order to free the church of

God from the oppression of the savage nations.88

Urban was quite familiar with the situation in Iberia and used language in his

letter to the counts in Catalonia that they would have recognized. Almost immedi-

ately after ascending to the papal throne, Urban concerned himself with propping

up the archbishopric of Toledo, recently restored in 1085, as well as the reconquest

and restoration of the lost archbishopric of Tarragona, a city about fifty-seven miles

south-west of Barcelona.89 In his letter to the Catalonian counts, Urban strove to

draw parallels between their current struggle in Iberia and his new expedition to the

East. For instance, Urban’s missives directed to those in Iberia, including the one at

the time of the First Crusade, often used the term ‘Saracen’ to describe the enemy.

This is particularly significant in the context of the First Crusade because, although

Urban used Saraceni to refer to Muslims in his letters concerning Iberia and Italy

(including his letter to the Vallombrosans), his letter to the Flemish calls the enemy

a ‘barbaric madness’, while his letter to the Bolognese does not name the enemy at

all.90 In his letter to Catalonia, Urban rhetorically linked the battles in Iberia and

Asia (and Italy) and said that the Catalonians needed to fight their battles closer to

home.91

87 Pseudo-Alexius, Ad Robertum I comitem Flandrensem, in Die Kreuzzugsbriefe, ed. Hagenmeyer,

no. 1. English tr. in Einar Joranson, ‘The Problem of the Spurious Letter of Emperor Alexius to the

Count of Flanders’, American Historical Review, 55 (1949), 812–15.

88 ‘auctoritate apostolice sedis promulgato, iturus Jherusolimam, ad liberandam Dei ecclesiam diu a

feris nationibus conculcatam.’ Actes des comtes de Flandre, 1071–128, ed. Fernand Vercauteren

(Brussels, 1938), no. 20. Note that Count Fulk of Anjou, however, got a similar message (directly

from Urban himself) and did not go. See above at n. 78.

89 The best account of Urban’s interest in Tarragona remains the unpublished Lawrence J.

McCrank, ‘Restoration and Reconquest in Medieval Catalonia: The Church and Principality of

Tarragona, 971–1177’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974). Ingrid Ringel has suggested that

Urban encountered Iberian texts and ideas while still at Cluny. See Ingrid Heike Ringel, ‘Ipse transfert regna et mutat tempora: Beobachtungen zur Herkunft von Dan. 2,21 bei Urban II’, in Ernst-Dieter

Hehl, Hubertus Siebert, and Franz Staab (eds.), Deus qui mutat tempora: Menschen und Institutionen im

Wandel des Mittelalters (Sigmaringen, 1987), 137–56; and Becker, Papst Urban II., ii. 285–9. I will be revisiting some of her conclusions in Matthew Gabriele, ‘The Rhetoric of Reconquest: Pope Urban II

and the Populus Christianus’, forthcoming.

90 e.g. Urban II, Ad Bernardo archiepiscopo Toletano, PL 151: 288–9; idem, Ad Ildefonsum Galleciae

regem, PL 151: 289–90; idem, Ad proceres provinciae Tarraconensis, PL 151: 303; idem, Ad

Berengarium Ausonensem episcopum, PL 151: 332–3; and idem, Ad Petrum Oscensem episcopum, PL

151: 504–6.

91 On this connection, but without mention of the different language deployed by Urban for the

First Crusade, see Becker, Papst Urban II., ii. 333–72; also William J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.1095–c.1187 (Rochester, NY, 2008), 123–6. Urban explicitly drew a

parallel between the two fronts in Iberia and Asia again in 1098. See Urban II, Ad Petrem Oscensem, PL

151: 504.

The Franks Return to the Holy Land

153

Urban flipped this idea of near versus far when he wrote his two letters to the

Bolognese and monks of Vallombrosa, undoing some of the work that Gregory VII

had done, probably because both places were intimately involved with the heated

politics of the Investiture Contest. In both instances, Urban’s letters focused on the

libertas ecclesiae. Bologna, near Ravenna, was firmly in the Salian camp under

Bishop Sigefried (d. 1086) but things began to change after his death and the

city began to move more towards the papacy, especially under Bishop Bernard

(d. 1104), who was close to Matilda of Tuscany and Urban II.92 The monastery of

Vallombrosa had vigorously defended ecclesiastical reform since its foundation in

the early eleventh century. Gregory VII, for example, helped the monks reject the

simoniacal bishop of Florence and then commended them for their actions after he

became pope. Urban later took the monastery under his protection.93 In his letters

to these Italian locations, Urban reversed what Gregory VII had done, moving the

focus from West to East. Although he did not want the monks of Vallombrosa to

go to Jerusalem, Urban did want them to urge on others (like the men of

Bologna).94 Just as Christians were struggling for their liberty against heretics and

schismatics in Italy, the crusaders would work towards the same end against the

pagans in the East.

It certainly matters what was said at Clermont, at other papal gatherings in

Francia and northern Italy, and in Urban’s letters. Urban’s message of novelty

blending with tradition, the new with the familiar, allowed the core of his message

to take hold.95 Like Sergius IV’s encyclical, Urban’s letters focused on how peace

must precede the expedition, how its endpoint would be Jerusalem, and how

necessary it was to strike back against the pagans who had trampled on the city.

Like Gregory VII, Urban focused on the libertas of the ecclesia and its synonym, the

populus Christi.96 Unlike either of his predecessors though, Urban, at least initially,