The First Crusade (13 page)

After the judgement of Pope Urban granted remission of all their sins to all Christians going out to fight the gentiles [non-Christians], then at last, as if previously asleep, [Tancred's] vigour was aroused, his powers grew, his eyes opened, his courage was born. For before
...
his mind was divided, uncertain whether to follow in the footsteps of the Gospel or the world.
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His biographer employs heavily romanticised imagery, almost encouraging us to imagine Tancred reborn as a superhero at the moment he took the cross, but the central message of the text - that spiritual devotion was the driving force behind crusade recruitment-is echoed by a wealth of charter evidence detailing aristocratic preparations for the expedition to Jerusalem.

Preparing the soul and body

Having taken the cross in emotional and often spontaneous rituals, most First Crusaders received the traditional symbols of the pilgrim -the staff and purse - at a secondary ceremony, held days, weeks or even months after the initial public commitment to the cause.* For the lay aristocracy, this presentation often took place within the confines of their local monastery and coincided with the finalisation of a whole swathe of spiritual and functional preparations, the details of which are now enshrined in charter records. This evidence reveals that most prospective crusader knights shared three concerns: fear of the coming campaign; a desire to depart on this sacred expedition with a clear conscience and in a penitent frame of mind; and a practical need to raise large sums of money with which to fund their exploits. Many turned to the established custom of devotional donation to resolve all three problems in one. The year
1096
saw a huge burst of activity, as hundreds of nobles sought to put their affairs in order, settling outstanding disputes with religious communities and disposing of an array of property in return for hard cash or equipment.

The Church stood to gain a great deal from this wave of penitent desperation, and most found it to be an extremely profitable year. But, in the months following the council of Clermont, so many knights looked to sell or mortgage property for money that the market eventually suffered from a glut of land and a shortage of hard coinage

The First Crusaders' status as pilgrims also afforded them a range of benefits traditionally associated with that penitential activity, including the protection of their property and land
by the Church in their absence,
to pay for it. Religious houses swept up estates for a fraction of their actual value, but still struggled to free up sufficient financial resources to meet the demand for transactions. At one point, the bishop of Liege was apparently forced to strip the jewels from every reliquary in his cathedral and all those in nearby churches to raise
1,300
silver marks and three gold marks, the mortgage price of Duke Godfreys castle at Bouillon. No ecclesiastic could afford to mortgage Robert of Normandy s entire duchy, so he turned to his brother, William Rufus, who duly raised
10,000
silver marks in return for rights to Normandy and all its revenues for five years.

Raymond of Toulouse was one crusader who made careful preparations for the expedition to Jerusalem. To secure the favourable intercession of the Virgin Mary he made a large donation to the cathedral of Le Puy, in return for which a candle was burned in front of her statue for the remainder of his natural life. Raymond explained that he had made this gift 'for the redemption of my crimes and those of my parents and for the honour and love of St Gilles, whom I have frequently offended by many kinds of injuries'. He also took care to clear the decks with the abbey of St Gilles, resolving a longstanding dispute over territory in their favour.

Godfrey of Bouillon likewise sought to settle his affairs. He sold or mortgaged every scrap of disposable property he could muster to the bishops of Verdun and Liege, raising valuable cash for himself and his brother Baldwin of Boulogne, and ending bitter quarrels with both pontiffs. One document noted that the brothers had been 'seized by the hope of an eternal inheritance and by love, prepared to go to fight for God in Jerusalem and sold and relinquished all their possessions'. They certainly continued to enjoy familial support while on crusade, for in
1098
their mother, Countess Ida of Boulogne, endowed a local monastery Tor the safety of her sons, Godfrey and Baldwin, who have gone to Jerusalem'. Godfrey did, however, leave a door open for his return to the West, maintaining an option to redeem the mo
rtgage on the castl
e of Bouillon and taking care to ask his overlord, Henry IV of Germany, for permission to leave for Jerusalem.

When juxtaposed with this rich mosaic of evidence for pious motivation, the once-fashionable myth that the crusaders were self-serving, disinherited, land-hungry younger sons must be discarded. Crusading was indeed an activity that could bring spiritual and material rewards, but it was in the first instance both intimidating and extremely cosdy. Devotion inspired Europe to crusade, and on the road to Jerusalem the First Crusaders proved time and again that their most powerful weapon was a shared sense of purpose and an indestructible spiritual resolution.
³⁵

PETER
THE
HERMIT
AND
THE
'PEOPLE'S
CRUSADE'

While the leaders, who needed to spend large sums of money for the great retinues, were preparing like careful administrators, the common people, poor in resources but copious in number, attached themselves to a certain Peter the Hermit, and they obeyed him as though he were the leader, as long as the matter remained within our own borders.
³⁶

Thus did one contemporary describe the impact of the enigmatic demagogue Peter the Hermit, the most famous 'popular' preacher of the campaign to Jerusalem and figurehead of what has become known as the 'People's Crusade'. In line with the tenor of this extract, historians long thought that two distinct movements emerged in response to the crusading ideal: an official expedition, dominated by the lay aristocracy and inspired by the preaching of Urban and his clergy; and a swarming horde of ignorant peasants, goaded by the fiery sermons of largely unsanctioned charismatic preachers into a frenzied, uncontrollable mob.

In reality, there was no clear-cut division between the forces, ideas and individuals that drove lordly knights and bedraggled paupers to embark on the crusade. Approved as well as unauthorised preachers spread the crusading message across Europe, their orations stirring both rich and poor to action, while Pope Urban's grand tour of France roused a broad cross-section of society. Nor was there necessarily a massive difference between the rituals engaged in by noble and by impoverished crusaders at the moment of taking the cross.
³⁷

The problem is that, when dealing with what might be termed the popular preaching of the crusade and the response it engendered, we are forced to adopt the vocabulary of the ambiguous and indefinite. We know that the majority of crusaders came from the middle and lower classes, but, of these tens of thousands of men, women and children, virtually no direct evidence survives. As in so many ages of humanity, the voice of the masses remains unheard, its story untold. We know, too, that Pope Urban empowered a number of freelance preachers to disseminate his call to arms throughout the Latin West, but of their identities or the message they propagated only the barest hints remain.
⁵⁸

Only Peter the Hermit, whose dynamic preaching was most likely not endorsed by the papacy, has found a place in the annals of history. Indeed, for centuries he was actually regarded as the man who originally conjured up the idea of crusading. Peter was unquestionably an exceptional individual, possessed of a singular talent for oration. Describing his career, one near-contemporary wrote:

A certain priest, Peter by name, once a hermit, who was bom in the city of Amiens which is in the west of the kingdom of the Franks, was the first to urge steadfastness in this Journey [to Jerusalem] with all the inspiration he could. In Berry, a region of the aforesaid kingdom, he became a preacher of the utmost persuasiveness and oratory.
³⁹

At first glance he must have looked like a vagabond, such was his penchant for extreme austerity and his disregard for physical cleanliness. One man who met Peter sought to describe his curious nature, recalling that:

outdoors he wore a woollen tunic, which revealed his ankles, and above it a hood; he wore a cloak to cover his upper body, and a bit of his arms, but his feet were bare. He drank wine and ate fish, but scarcely ever ate bread. This man, partly because of his reputation, partly because of his preaching, [assembled] a very large army.
⁴⁰

Another near-contemporary noted that 'he was small in stature and his outward form was contemptible, but greater valour ruled in his slight frame. For he was sharp witted, his glance was bright and captivating, and he spoke with ease and eloquence
.
⁴¹
Today, Peter's evident asceticism, repellent appearance and unusual eating habits might lead him to be shunned by society. To an eleventh-century audience, his peculiar habits simply indicated an unearthly piety, imitating the life of Christ's apostles, and served to amplify the magnetic impact of his sermons. As a youth he may have undergone some form of scholastic education, he undoubtedly spent some years as a recluse, but by
1095
he had already developed a burgeoning reputation as an itinerant preacher, advocating devotional poverty and a return to simple Christian virtues. One eyewitness recalled:

We saw him wander through cities and towns, spreading his teaching, surrounded by so many people, given so many gifts, and acclaimed for such great piety, that I don't ever remember anyone equally honoured
...
whatever he did or said seemed like something almost divine. Even the hairs of his mule were torn out as though they were relics
...
a novelty loved by the common people.
⁴²

Even before the crusade was conceived, Peter's astounding gift for public speaking enabled him to incite a passionate, even hysterical response in his listeners. In this he was not unique: medieval society seems to have been particularly prone to demagogic influence, and within a few decades charismatic heretics were enthralling western audiences, the followers of one being so mesmerised that they ended up drinking his bathwater as a holy elixir.
⁴³

Until the mid-nineteenth century, historians believed that Peter had played a central role in the genesis of the First Crusade. This tradition, now widely discounted, depended on a story circulated in the West in the first decades of the twelfth century. This maintained that Peter had, even before the council of Clermont, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Upon visiting Jerusalem, he supposedly witnessed first-hand the ritual abuse of indigenous Christians under Islamic rule, and in an audience with the city's senior churchman, the patriarch, heard tales of unbearable suffering. Distraught, the hermit sought solace in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where, so the story goes, "since he was exhausted by-prayers and vigils, he was overtaken by sleep. And the majesty of the Lord Jesus was shown to him in a vision
.
In this moment of revelation, Peter was promised that he would receive from the patriarch letters of our mission with the seal of the Holy Cross, and you will hasten as quickly as possible your journey to the land of your people, you will disclose the malicious acts and injustices inflicted on our people and holy place, and stir the hearts of the faithful to the cleansing of the holy places in Jerusalem'. Having fulfilled this prophecy, the hermit returned to Europe, gained an audience with the pope and persuaded Urban that he should launch a crusading appeal.
⁴⁴
There may be some credence to the idea that Peter bore a letter allegedly lending divine sanction to the expedition to the Holy Land, because another chronicle described the hermit 'carrying round a letter which he claimed to have fallen from heaven, stating that all Christendom from all parts of the world must migrate in arms to Jerusalem [and] drive out the pagans'.
⁴⁵
But there is no evidence to suggest that Peter did visit the Levant prior to November
1095,
nor is it possible to confirm that he ever met or was sanctioned by Pope Urban.

The hermit was, nonetheless, already preaching the crusade with zealous enthusiasm by the end of
1095.
In the months that followed, his ministry spread from Berry through northern France and into Germany, and wherever he spoke the fires of crusading fervour ignited. Peter had already proved that he could work wonders with the message of ascetic piety, but once he began to exhort the merits of a devotional pilgrimage to recapture
Jerusalem the effect was almost
miraculous. Unfortunately no record of his sermons survives, so we cannot know whether he distorted Pope Urban's vision of the crusade, nor can we reconstruct the spiritual benefits he promised to participants. But the impact of his preaching is clear. One near-contemporary noted that his words attracted the clergy, the lay aristocracy and 'all the common people, as many sinful as pious men, adulterers, murderers, thieves, perjurers, robbers . . . every sort of people of the Christian faith, indeed even the female sex. A Greek observer who lived through the crusade recalled that, 'as if he had sounded a divine voice in the hearts of all, Peter the Hermit inspired the Franks from everywhere to gather together with their weapons, horses and other military equipment'.
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