The Age of Chivalry (11 page)

A
BOVE
An illustrated poem “Estoire d'Outremer” by William of Tyre
(c.
1130–
c.
1185) depicting the Siege of Antioch, which began in October 1097
.

It was a ragged, fractious and hungry army—reduced perhaps to a quarter of its original strength—that arrived outside Jerusalem in early June. A prolonged siege was therefore out of the question, and the Fatimid occupiers easily repulsed the crusaders' initial full frontal assault. The arrival of a party of Genoese sailors in mid-June transformed the situation, however, since their engineering skill and timber supplies enabled siege towers to be built.

On July 13, 1099 the final assault began, although even then the organization of troops reflected differing group loyalties. Raymond's southern French troops were massed by the south gate, while Godfrey of Bouillon and Tancred were among the commanders gathered at the north wall. The final push of July 15 was, however, a coordinated exercise, and the crusaders breached both the northern and the southern defenses. Atrocious scenes followed, with Muslims and Jews being put to the sword. Jerusalem's population of Greek Christians had already been expelled from the city at the start of the siege, otherwise they, too, would probably have been massacred. A large number of Muslims had fled to take refuge in the Al-Aqsa mosque located on the Temple Mount.
Tancred initially offered them his protection when calling a halt to the slaughter on July 15, but then had them killed the following day. Jerusalem's synagogue was burned to the ground by the crusaders, and Jews who had sought safety inside the building were killed.

Jerusalem would be organized as a kingdom. But was it seemly that the city where Christ the King had worn his unique crown of thorns should be ruled by a prince whose title would also be that of king? Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon, the two leading candidates for Jerusalem's leadership, both had reservations on this point. (Both also recognized the political expediency of advertising so pious a reluctance.) When the crusaders' council met at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on July 22 its members elected Godfrey to be the secular leader of Jerusalem, and he would rule without holding a kingly title. In a fit of anger Raymond led his men from the city. On August 12, at the coastal site of Ascalon, Godfrey's authority and the kingdom's security were confirmed when the forces of Christian Jerusalem defeated the coalition force led by Fatimid Egyptian commanders. The enmity between Raymond and Godfrey stopped the crusaders from capturing the city of Ascalon itself, but Jaffa, Tiberias and Haifa were among Godfrey's subsequent conquests during his brief period as ruler. Furthermore, his creation of the Principality of Galilee and the county of Jaffa laid the foundations of a system of vassalage within the kingdom's enlarged boundaries. Following his death in July 1100 Godfrey was succeeded by his brother Baldwin of Edessa, who had no qualms about being crowned king.

The great majority of the First Crusade's partisans who made it to Jerusalem were back home by 1100, leaving no more than a few hundred knights behind in the new kingdom. Many crusaders had returned home before Jerusalem's capture, however, and they were keen to regain their honor by fulfilling the vow made when they took the Cross. Many of them, including Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois, therefore joined the further expedition that was launched in 1101. Most members of this subsidiary crusade, including Hugh, were slaughtered by Seljuk Turks while crossing Anatolia, and it was a mere remnant that arrived in Jerusalem by Easter 1102.

Raymond of Toulouse's ambition to rule his own crusader state led him to launch an offensive in the Lebanon against the emir of Tripoli in 1103. Following Raymond's death in 1106 his son Bertrand continued the campaign and, following the emir's surrender in 1109, he became ruler of the county of Tripoli—the last of the crusader states to be founded in the Levant. Latin princes therefore controlled the entire eastern Mediterranean coast by that stage, and the greatly weakened Seljuk Turks no longer bore down on the Greeks as heavily as had been the case in the 1080s. Islamic civilization, however, regarded the crusader states with a sense of shame mixed with anger. The question now was how best to beat the infidel on the doorstep.

Although the crusading story is dominated by war, it also marked the beginning of a new phase in the history of the cultural relationship between Latins, Greeks and Muslims
. La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland)
was circulated in manuscript form in 12th-century France, and these copies incorporate references to Outremer, the crusaders' name for Palestine
.

But there was an earlier oral tradition behind the
Song
, and the celebration of Roland as a self-sacrificial Christian hero is a literary anticipation of the crusading ideology. Settlers in the crusader state brought Western attitudes with them while also being affected by an international milieu. Crusaders who stayed, and their descendants, often learned Greek and Arabic. Intermarriage with Muslims who had converted was exceptional but more frequent in the case of Greek, Syriac and Armenian Christians. Information about Outremer circulated in the West, and William of Tyre (
c
.1130–86), archbishop of that see and before then chancellor of Jerusalem, produced a magnificent account of 12th-century Outremer in his
Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum
(
History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea
). Born and raised in Jerusalem, and then educated at Paris and Bologna, William wrote as a Latin Christian, but his account of both Greeks and Muslims shows a nuanced appreciation of cultures very different from his own. East-West trading contacts, aided by the presence of many Italian merchants, acquired a new vitality as a result of the crusader states' foundation. Northern European woolen textiles appeared for the first time in the Middle East, and Palestine—which had been a commercial center for centuries—acquired new European markets. Sugar, lemons and melons, cotton, muslin and damask, powder, glass mirrors, and even the rosary—all made the journey from East to West and ensured that the crusades created a new appetite for luxury as well as spreading a taste for war.

An illuminated detail from the
Grandes Chroniques de France,
depicting an episode in
La Chanson de Roland.

The late 11th century saw a new and explosive issue arise in European politics: whether it should be kings or popes that had the right to appoint the senior clergy. Up until then
sacerdotium
and
imperium
(spiritual power and temporal power) had barely been distinguishable from each other. The empire presided over by German princes had been a particularly strong papal ally. In turn, successive popes endorsed the imperial campaign to convert and colonize the pagan populations to the east, and the senior clergy of the German Church—who were frequently noblemen and invariably appointed by the princes—played a key role in administering the
reich
or empire
.

Family connections and the politics of patronage had created a close-knit imperial governing circle by the late 11th century, but now the stability of this élite was first threatened and then undermined by the papacy's assertion of its own independent power and rights. The contest over the right to “invest” or appoint senior clergy raised momentous questions about the nature of power, the basis of obedience and the legitimacy of government itself. Although its impact was greatest within the empire, the investiture struggle also acquired a pan-European dimension. It formed a major chapter in the development of public opinion, with both sides deploying speeches, sermons and texts in order to gain popular support. The papacy's stance was startlingly novel, and its opponents had to counter it with explicit statements defining the basis of regal power.

The wide-ranging assertion of papal authority instigated by Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) was the inspiration for reformers who now reacted against the papacy's recent stance. Aristocratic factions in Rome and Italy had turned the papal office into their plaything in the tenth century, and the “Gregorian” reform movement's pronounced idealism proposed a different path. The reformers asserted that it was God's will that all mankind should be embraced within one Christian structure, and since the Church was the divine instrument charged with implementing such a vision, its authority was supreme over all forms of secular power. Providence allowed kings and princes to have their
imperium
, but they were subject to the papacy that, as the central and governing Church institution, existed on higher spiritual and moral planes. Successive legislative initiatives from the mid-11th century onward sought to implement this lofty vision and succeeded in creating a new body of canon law.

R
IGHT
A copperplate painting of Pope Gregory VII from Salerno Cathedral, Italy, which he consecrated in 1085 and where he is also buried
.

The intellectual vigor and brisk administrative style of Hildebrand, the son of a blacksmith, brought a meritocratic edge to the papal confrontation with Europe's lay princes. Hildebrand bore the imprint of the great abbey at Cluny, the Benedictine foundation that spearheaded monasticism's revival in Western Europe. His earlier career as a papal administrator, which included a period serving as legate in Paris, showed the same reformist zeal he would later display as Pope Gregory VII (1073–85). When the Roman aristocracy reverted to their old ways and elected their own candidate as pope, it was Hildebrand who led the papal army to victory on the island of Corsica where the unfortunate Benedict X had taken refuge. His eloquence made him the natural spokesman for the Gregorian movement's distinctive causes—including clerical celibacy, which was seen as a way of nurturing collective self-confidence and entrenching the distinction between ecclesiastical and secular government. Church centralization meant that contentious cases had to be referred to Rome, and this irritated the many bishops who campaigned against this curtailment of their influence. By 1059 Hildebrand was serving as archdeacon in the city of Rome where he became a popular figure among the local population. The papacy of Alexander II saw a widespread implementation of the reform movement's objectives, including restricting the right of papal election to the College of Cardinals. This denied the emperor his previous right to nominate a candidate—a measure that was central to the restoration of the Church's independence. Hildebrand's own accession to the papacy owed much to the support expressed for his candidacy on the streets of Rome, where a series of popular acclamations preceded his election by the cardinals on April 22, 1073.

Simony involved the buying of Church offices, and Gregory was as devoted to its eradication as European monarchs were to its preservation. It was a good source of revenue and, for the imperial territories in particular, simony helped to ease the appointment of rulers' relatives and supporters as bishops and abbots. In 1074 Gregory's first council condemned simony in general and confirmed that celibacy should now be the rule for all clergy. A second council held in the following year stated that only the pope could appoint churchmen to their offices or move them from see to see. The German territories would be the testing ground for the implementation of these policies, and the newly elected emperor Henry IV was already having difficulty asserting his authority.