The Glory of the Crusades (13 page)

155
France,
Victory
, 222.

156
Ibid., 224.

157
Ibid., 208

158
Albert of Aachen,
Historia Hierosolymitana
, RHC
Oc
. 4, 372, in France,
Victory
, 230.

159
W. Stubbs, ed.,
Itinerarium peregrinorum et Gesta regis Ricardi
(RS, London, 1864), trans. H.J. Nicholson as
Chronicle of the Third Crusade
(Aldershot: 1997), ch. 67, tr. pp. 127–8 quoted in Housley,
Fighting for the Cross
, 153.

160
Fulcher of Chartres,
Chronicle
, Book I, XVI.2, in Peters, 73.

161
France,
Victory
, 241.

162
Ibid., 267.

163
Pope Paschal II in his letter to the clergy in Gaul (1099) wrote: “[W]e decree that those be held in disgrace who left the siege of Antioch through weak or questionable faith; let them remain in excommunication, unless they affirm with certain pledges that they will return.” Peters, 297.

164
Some sources indicate Stephen was at Antioch, but deeming the siege a failure left one day before the Crusaders liberated it. Madden believes Stephen was in Alexandretta. Madden,
New Concise History of the Crusades
, 28.

165
France,
Victory
, 279.

166
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 144.

167
France,
Victory
, 283.

168
Ibid., 294.

169
Gesta Francorum
in Peters,
The First Crusade
, 223.

170
France,
Victory
, 197.

171
Ibid., 148.

172
France,
Victory
, 311.

173
Fulcher of Chartres,
Chronicle
, Book I, XXV.2, in Peters, 84.

174
Numbers marching to Jerusalem from Raymond d’Aguilers in France,
Victory
, 3.

175
Raymond d’Aguilers in Peters, 254.

176
Ibid., 255.

177
France,
Western Warfare
, 118.

178
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 157.

179
France,
Victory
, 355.

180
Thomas F. Madden, “Inventing the Crusades,” review of
The Crusades, Christianity and Islam
, by Jonathan-Riley Smith, First Things, June/July 2009,
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/05/inventing-the-crusades-1243195699
, accessed July 31, 2013.

181
France,
Victory
, 355.

182
Peters, 255.

183
Chronicle
, Book I, XXVII, 13, in Peters,
The First Crusade
, 91.

184
Peters, 294.

185
Raymond d'Aguiliers,
Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem
, RHC Occ, iii, 300, trans. J.H. and L.L. Hill (Philadelphia: 1968), 128. in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 31.

186
The linkage of the passages in the various chronicles to Scripture is found in Walter Brandmüller,
Light and Shadows
, 31 & 157.

187
G.K. Beale,
The Book of Revelation—A Commentary on the Greek Text
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 775.

188
Ibid., 780. Beale also comments: “Perhaps uppermost in John’s mind is Joel 4:2, 11–12, 14, which says that God will enter into judgment with the ‘surrounding nations’ outside Jerusalem”; Ibid., 781.

189
Ibid., 781.

190
Ibid., 782.

191
John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill were the first to recognize the imagery used by Christian sources referenced scripture. Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,”
Crusades
, vol. 3 The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004), 65.

192
France,
Victory
, 356.

193
Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” 25.

194
Ibid.

195
Amin Maalouf,
The Crusades through Arab Eyes
, trans. Jon Rothschild (New York: Shocken Books, 1984), 135.

196
Madden, New Concise history of the Crusades, 182.

197
“[A] position which recognized the claims of the Church while conceding practical power to the lay authority.” France,
Victory
, 357.

198
Housley,
Fighting for the Cross
, 7.

199
France,
Victory
, 14.

200
The eleven-percent figure is found in Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Early Crusaders to the East and the Costs of Crusading, 1095–1130” in Madden,
The Crusades—Essential Readings
, 161. Numbers of Western Europeans by 1100 is in Jonathan Riley-Smith,
The Crusades—A History, Second Edition
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 66.

4

Warrior-Monks, Preachers, and the Second Crusade

Edessa is taken, as you know, and the Christians are sorely afflicted because of it; the churches are burnt and abandoned. God is no longer sacrificed there. Knights, make your decisions, you who are esteemed for your skill in arms; make a gift of your bodies to him who was placed on the cross for you.

Chevalier,
Mult Estes Guariz
201

We believe that it has come about through the providence of divine counsel that so great a multitude of the faithful from diverse regions is preparing to fight the infidel, and that almost the whole of Christendom is being summoned for so praiseworthy a task.

Pope Bl. Eugenius III
202

The fifty-six year old Cistercian was exhausted. His normal spiritual practices placed great strain on his body and forty years of such practices had taken their toll. Pope Eugenius III had entrusted the holy monk with the task of generating support for the journey to the Holy Land. Despite his ill health, Bernard of Clairvaux had persevered in his mission and now, in 1146, his preaching journey was almost complete.

He had traveled several hundred miles throughout Flanders and the German Empire in mid-winter over the prior seven months and given dozens of sermons to the warriors of Christendom. He had even personally motivated the two greatest monarchs of the time to attend to the “business of God.”
203
Such success had followed Bernard throughout his life, especially in his monastic work, and his preaching tour had accomplished his papal tasking. Bernard had done his part. Christendom was mobilized; warriors were making preparations once again to fight the forces of Islam and aid their Latin brethren in the East.

The Latin East

Although nearly all of the surviving First Crusaders journeyed home to Europe, a few settled in the Holy Land. Over the next fifty years, they consolidated, expanded, and solidified control of what became known as Outrémer,
204
stretching 600 miles from north to south.

The activity of the First Crusade produced three Crusader States: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The County of Tripoli, another Crusader State, was established during the reign of King Baldwin I. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was “the emotional, political and strategic heart of Outrémer.”
205
Important religiously and politically but not economically, the kingdom suffered greatly from succession problems throughout its history; only twice in its eighty-eight year history did son succeed father as king, and the two times it happened, one son was a minor and the other a sickly leper.

After the death of Godfrey de Bouillon, who had refused out of humility and faith to accept the title of king, his brother Baldwin hurried to Jerusalem to take the throne. He was “fittingly sad at his brother’s death but even happier with the expected inheritance.”
206
Baldwin had no qualms about taking the title “king of Jerusalem” and was crowned in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Christmas Day, 1100.

Life in the Latin East

The Latin settlers were never numerous during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and were minority rulers of large Muslim populations.
207
The “Franks,” as their Muslim neighbors called them, soon found that accommodation with the local populace was the path to growth and success. Relations between the Franks and Muslims were shaped by mutual benefit and general indifference. “Spontaneous uprisings against the Franks were rare; active collaboration with them was limited.”
208

There was very little cultural exchange and there were very few conversions. One reason for the lack of conversion was the allowance by the Latin settlers for Jews and Muslims to openly practice their faith. The Crusades were not wars of conversion. Although Muslims were not allowed to reside in Jerusalem itself and the Dome of the Rock was turned into a church, Muslims were permitted to visit the area and pray.
209

The policy of general accommodation by the Latin settlers with the Muslim populace became a point of contention with Crusaders traveling from Europe, who were horrified at the Franks’ willingness to negotiate and even enter into treaties with Muslims. It was a difficult balancing act for those who lived in the Crusader States. They were no longer soldiers on the march; they recognized the need to live prudently with their Muslim neighbors. Yet they needed assistance from Christendom to maintain and sustain their settlements. Arrivals from Europe failed to understand the position of the Latin settlers and “as time passed, a gulf opened between the new crusaders, who arrived from the West to fight Muslims and the local residents, who would have to live with the Muslims after the pilgrims returned home.”
210