The Crusades (eBook)

In the last two decades of the 11th century, the Byzantine Empire’s capital, Constantinople, was on the verge of collapse. Invasions from abroad and internal warfare threatened the existence of the empire. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who was crowned on April 5th, 1081, was immediately challenged by an incursion into the empire by a force of Norman freebooters from Italy under the leadership of Robert Guiscard. Guiscard, who had set out from Normandy around 1047 with a small following of mounted soldiers, had settled in the Byzantine province of Calabria in Italy by means of force. Through incredible military prowess, he gained authority over the entire population of Normans who had settled before him in southern Italy. After conquering most of Byzantine Sicily, Guiscard sailed with his troops across the Adriatic Sea. In 1081, he defeated the Byzantine soldiers in the outpost at Dyrrhachium, located in present-day Albania. The Normans then chased the defeated Byzantine forces into Greece, where they were threatened with complete annihilation.

It was only by seeking assistance from abroad that Alexios was able to save his provinces in the southern Balkans. He relieved the pressure Guiscard was exerting on the Byzantine soldiers by paying Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV 360,000 gold pieces to step up his attacks on the Normans in Italy. The Italo-Normans were allied with Pope Gregory VII, who had made an enemy of the Holy Roman emperor. Henry IV had claimed that it was his right to appoint church officials—archbishops, bishops, and abbots —or invest ecclesiastical offices within his empire. In effect, this meant that he could demand his share of revenues from ecclesiastical estates. Pope Gregory claimed that the right to fill ecclesiastical offices was his alone. In 1076, Henry was excommunicated for his intransigence in what is known as the Investiture Controversy.

Henry decided to invade Italy to settle his differences with the pope. He attacked the pope’s Italo-Norman allies in southern Italy and assumed authority over states directly under the authority of the papacy. In Rome, a party of Italians and Germans arose to combat the pope’s broad claim of power. In 1080, a synod of monarchist churchmen unseated Gregory and replaced him with Pope Clement III. Two years later, Emperor Henry attacked Rome. After a siege of seven months, the city fell. Pope Gregory, who refused to accept his replacement as pope, fled to Monte Cassino and then later to Salerno along with his court. Clement III was installed on the papal throne in 1084. A year later, Gregory died in exile.

The Normans, who were the pope’s allies in Italy, faced a formidable enemy in Emperor Henry IV, who was prepared to take over their estates. Robert Guiscard was thus forced to abandon his expedition against the Byzantines in the Balkans and return to Italy. This ended the crisis faced by the Byzantine emperor.

The followers of Gregory VII regarded Clement as a usurper, or an antipope. After Gregory’s death, they elected a line of popes opposed to the Holy Roman emperor. Among them were Pope Victor III and Urban II, the latter who served from March 1088 to his death in July 1099.

Urban, who was French by birth, spent the early years of his papacy outside Rome. He was kept away by Antipope Clement III, who was under the protection of the Holy Roman emperor. Among Urban’s early successes were the arrangement of diplomatic marriages between powerful Italian families and securing the support of England against his rival pope in Rome.

The ascendancy of Urban’s papacy began at the Council of Piacenza, a synod of ecclesiastics and laymen, which was held in the first week of March in 1095. This was a large meeting, consisting of 200 bishops, 4,000 other church leaders, and some 30,000 laymen. As well as denouncing the Antipope Clement III, the council considered the request put forth by an embassy from Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. He sought help in recovering Byzantine territory that had been lost by the expanding eastern empire of the Seljuk Turks.

The Sunni Muslim Seljuk Turks had risen to power in Persia and spread like lightning across vast swaths of Asia Minor in the 11th century. After adding Armenia and Georgia to their empire, the Seljuks, under their leader Muhammad bin Dawud Chaghri, more commonly known as Alp Arslan, engaged with the Byzantine forces. The invasion came to a head with Alp Arslan’s rout of the Byzantines in the Battle of Manzikert in August 1071 in eastern Asia Minor. The Byzantine emperor at the time, Romanos IV Diogenes, was captured. The defeat threw the Byzantine court into disarray. When he was freed, Romanos’ opponents deposed, blinded, and exiled him. He died a slow death from an infection brought on by the removal of his eyes. He was succeeded first by Michael VII Doukas, who was forced to abdicate in 1078 by his generals, and then Nikephoros III, who was also forced to abdicate.

With the coronation of Alexios I Komnenos in 1081, a measure of internal order was restored to the Byzantine Empire, but the presence of the Turks in what had once been Byzantine territory was a constant irritant to the Byzantine emperor and his nobility and presented an unending threat to the stability of the empire. Thus, the call for help went out to Pope Urban II.

Although no action was taken on Alexios’ request for military aid at the Council of Piacenza, it was critical to the unfolding of events at the subsequent council of ecclesiastics and laymen held in Clermont, France, that same year. At Clermont, Urban II met with a large congregation of French and Italian bishops to deal with reforms within the Church. In the midst of this council, on November 27th, 1095, Urban II preached to a large crowd of peasants, nobility, and clergy assembled in a field outside Clermont. His persuasive arguments for dealing with the enemy of the Byzantines was framed around the responsibility of Christians to rid the Holy Land of infidels.

Five versions of Urban’s sermon were written down later. These were influenced by subsequent events, so none of them can be considered to be the exact words of the pope himself. In one version, he is claimed to have said that his flock of Christians should cease fighting among themselves, cease hating one another, and “Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race.”

It is reported that his call for liberating the Holy Land from heathens was greeted with chants from his audience. “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” No doubt Urban expected this enthusiastic outburst because prior to giving his speech, he had traveled widely in southern France to have preliminary talks with ecclesiastical and secular lords about his idea for a Crusade.

One account of Pope Urban’s speech says that he promised, “All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins.” This was to be so because the “despised and base race” who worship demons should never conquer “a people which has the faith of omnipotent God...made glorious with the name of Christ.”

Pope Urban set out several reasons for calling for a Crusade against the Turks. He said that it was the duty of Christians to protect their brothers in faith in the East. However, there was also an expansionist tinge to his speech. He believed that the reason there was so much infighting in the West was due to the growing peasant population depending on diminishing quantities of productive land. Not only were the peasants suffering, but their landlords were also being stretched thin because their rental income in the form of agricultural produce was diminishing. Urban also understood the situation that the non-inheriting, impoverished sons of nobles were in. He praised their military prowess and offered them a way to distinguish themselves on the battlefield by engaging in the Crusade. He urged them to stop engaging in raids on their neighbors, in which they sought to demonstrate their knightly skills. Rather, the pope urged them to take up arms with their fellow Christians against the infidels in the East. The opportunity to win remission from their sins was an added bonus. The pope promised those who took the cross that upon their death, a smooth and hasty elevation from limbo or purgatory would occur, allowing them to live an eternal life in heaven. 

A successful Crusade against the Muslims in the Holy Land would make it possible for all pilgrims to travel to the holiest of Christian sites without being harassed by non-believers. Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, said Urban, had suffered awful torture and murder at the hands of the Seljuks. Female pilgrims had even been raped. Urban’s condemnation of the Muslims was based on secondhand reports and was in all likelihood to have been somewhat of an exaggeration. Urban reported that the most abominable act suffered by Christians at the hands of the Turks was having their navels perforated and their intestines drawn out and then attached to a stake. The hapless victims were forced to walk around until all of their intestines were pulled out and they died. It is unlikely that Urban was citing firsthand accounts of this way of slowly killing Christians. In all probability, he had most likely been told the story by one of his advisors who, in turn, had adapted it from the story of the martyrdom of St. Erasmus in 303 CE. The Christian Erasmus had suffered extreme torture at the hands of the pagan Romans. The details of this were repeated and magnified in...