What led to the First Crusade?
What happened in the 11th century that compelled European Christians to campaign into the Holy Land?
Much has been written about the military exploits of the crusaders, the clash of cultures, and the unfortunate massacres following their sometimes unexpected victories. However, before we embark on the origin of the First Crusade in the late 11th century, we will address its interpretation by modern-day writers and media. What is it that the modern world thinks of the First Crusade?
The common misconceptions are as follows:
The crusades were an excuse for the indiscriminate destruction of Muslims and Jews, led by bloodthirsty Catholic prelates and dukes.
The crusades were purely politically motivated in order to curb the advance of Islamic influence in the Mediterranean.
The crusades were simply an economic endeavor by greedy Italian merchants.
The majority of the knights who embarked on crusade were not really Christian, because true Christian would not embark on such a campaign.
In summary: the First Crusade of 1096 AD is depicted as frenzied, fanatic European Christians seeking to destroy innocent Jews and Muslims on a whim. Movies about the crusades almost always features a few valiant knights lost in a herd of foolish lemmings, indiscriminately stampeding through Middle Eastern villages and cities.
Invariably, the valiant knight who finds himself in the minority as a free thinker—always the heroes of these films—will reject institutional religion and embrace non-denominationalist ideas of soteriological self-reliance, as a sort of personal struggle mirroring how the writers would envision themselves in the same circumstances.
It is a strained effort by writers to identify a hero in a series of events and a medieval worldview that they necessarily regard as evil, based upon the assumed premises outlined above. Such interpretations have even become blockbusters, like Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, in which the characters themselves are either alloys of multiple people or complete inversions—with the notable exception of Guy de Lusignon, who was indeed a fool.
Educational institutions will often herald the same interpretation on the crusades as ill-advised campaigns at best, and outright genocide at worst. I believe that most reading this article up until this point will be quite familiar with what I am saying. However, there is far more to the story!
It is important to note that the majority of Europe was Catholic, with the exception of the lower Balkans, Greece, and eastern principalities who were Orthodox; as well as southern Islamic Spain. Thus, the perspective of the common European was through an overtly medieval Catholic lens.
How do we shed our own perspectives in order to attempt to view the world as they did? This can only begin with introspection: realizing one’s own proclivities toward historical interpretation. To that end, it helps to look not only at the medieval charters, but at the architecture as well as manuscripts outlining daily life, as has been so eloquently done by Robert Keim’s Via Mediaevalis. These outlets provide insight as to what the medieval Catholic people considered important over time, as well as their perspectives on major events.
However, the most important component is context, context, context. What was happening before 1096 AD? What would draw northern Europeans from hearth and home to progress thousands of kilometers on foot through forests, rivers, and deserts into a territory with a completely different culture and attempt to wage a victorious war against its inhabitants?
Christian Pilgrims and the Islamic States
Upon his coronation as Roman Emperor in 800 AD, Charlemagne engaged in diplomatic discussions with the other major powers of his day that included not only the aggrieved Byzantines, whose crown he had taken, but also the Muslim caliphs in Baghdad—the Abbasids. Charlemagne’s diplomats came to an agreement with their Abbasid counterparts that the pilgrimage routes stretching from Central Europe to Jerusalem by land would be protected from raiders and thieves.
The Abbasids held true to their part of the deal for centuries, ensuring that Christian pilgrims were able to arrive in the Holy Land. Even though great churches like the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Damascus had been converted into the Great Mosque of Damascus after the Islamic conquest, the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem remained Christian.
The successes of the various Islamic states in conquering Anatolia and Spain in the 8th century faced a heavy backlash 100 years later, marked by the increasing success of the Spanish Reconquista that had been initiated immediately following the Umayyad conquest. The Visigothic Spanish nobles who had been forced to leave Spain for France returned with armies and support from nearly all of the Christian kingdoms and Empires.
In Anatolia, the Byzantines managed to reclaim the western and much of the southern coastlines, including the cities of Tarsus and Antioch. Their success was buttressed by the internal strife of the Islamic states, specifically within the the Abbasid state that had been taken over by a Shi’ite dynasty. Their Sunni predecessors considered them heretics and immediately engaged in attempting to remove them from power.
The Shi’ite sphere of influence spread to other realms including Egypt, which was ruled by a dynasty known as the Fatimids forming a rivalry with the Abbasids. Both states vied for control of Palestine and the Levant seeking control of both the port cities and the holy sites including the Islamic Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
The Abbasids in Baghdad found a major rival in the Fatimid Cairo ruled at that time by Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, whom the Abbasids thought to be an imposter. In fact the rule of the Abbasids, who had at one point conquered the entire Middle East and North Africa, was regularly challenged by dissidents like the Umayyads and Fatimids.
The Islamic world was fraught with rebellion and religious turmoil to a much higher degree than Christian Europe, largely because it covered more physical territory and lacked a central authority like the Vatican that could quell unrest and initiate negotiations on neutral ground. Competition was intense with countless claims of land, thrones, and divine right. The Fatimids even competed with the Abbasids through education by endowing a House of Knowledge in Cairo in 1004 AD as a response to the well-regarded House of Wisdom in Baghdad—which was later destroyed by the Mongols in 1258 AD.
The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim ruled spontaneously, purging political enemies at will, and sowing seeds of distrust within his own army. This occurred partially due to paranoia, but also due to a hatred of Christians and Jews whom he forced to wear specific clothing to identify them in public, such as large crosses around the necks of Christians and blocks of wood around the necks of Jews. Naturally, such uncertainty leads to mistakes that, in turn, can lead to calamities.
In 1009 AD, al-Hakim’s forces entered Jerusalem and destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—one of the holiest Christian sites built on a premises encompassing both the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where Christ was buried, as well as the cliff of Golgotha, where Christ was crucified. Hundreds of priests, monks, nuns, and even the Patriarch of Alexandria were executed by the Fatimids on the caliph’s command, whose campaign also extended to the destruction of Jewish holy sites and synagogues.
The Christian European Response
The religious status quo within Europe was also tense around the same time. At the turn of the 11th century, the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) led by the Ottonian Dynasty regularly clashed with both the Byzantines and the Vatican, predominantly on religious topics like the investing of bishops.
The response to the destruction of the Christian holy sites was pure astonishment and many Christian European leaders called for a retaliation. However, no one could determine how that armed response would look, nor could they identify who would lead it. Meanwhile, the Abbasids reclaimed control over Jerusalem and allowed the Byzantines to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1048 AD. After all, pilgrims brought substantial monetary worth with them, which stimulated local economies.
Another power was looming in the back ground: the Turks led by Selchük, who had converted to Islam and became the arch-nemesis of both the Muslim Abbasids and the Christian Byzantines. Under his guidance, the Turks raided the Christian pilgrims for all of their worth, causing a complete disruption in the flow of penitents seeking to fulfill their confessional obligations, as well as substantial loss in the coastal markets. Selchük’s grandson, Tughrul, even conquered Baghdad in 1055 AD, forming a Turkish base in the heart of Iraq.
The topic of retaliation re-emerged in Europe but was quickly overshadowed by the dispute of ecclesiastical authority between the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael I Cerularius, and Pope Leo IX. The conflict reached a fever pitch and caused the East-West Schism that has separated the Eastern Orthodox Churches from the Catholic Church since 1054 AD. Patriarch Michael would go on to incite multiple political rebellions and even claim the imperial throne for himself before he was exiled by the Byzantine nobles.
Calamity would visit the Byzantines again in 1071 AD when the entire army and the emperor were slaughtered by Turkish forces under Alp Arslan. The Byzantines quickly regrouped, but only had forces to protect the region around the Aegean Sea and sent emissaries to the west for assistance.
In the western part of Europe, the HRE was still tussling with the Vatican on the topic of the right to invest bishops. Previously, the Holy Roman Emperors envisioned the duty of episcopal investitures as included with their own rights, a process that resulted in the Reichskirche (imperial church) that, more often than not, sided with the HRE over the Vatican.
From the Catholic perspective, the Church had just lost a significant portion to the rebellion of Patriarch Michael I, as well as the pilgrimage routes to the Holy Land. Now the HRE threatened to militarily engage the pope’s supporters and perhaps even the Papal States. At the same time, the request of the Byzantines presented a new opportunity to regain the trust of the East and Pope Gregory VII called upon the western Princes to go forth to the aid of their eastern brothers in 1074 AD.
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The champion of the Catholic cause to reel in the HRE was the Countess Mathilda of Canossa, rather than the more belligerent cardinals who had failed in Constantinople decades prior. Together with Pope Gregory VII, the countess brought the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, literally to his knees at her castle in 1079 AD, in which he submitted to the pope on threat of excommunication and rescinded his assumed right to invest the bishops of his realm.
The event caused a ripple effect that would course through Western Europe, eventually reaching England through the efforts of Anselm of Canterbury at the Concordat of London 1107. The final decision regarding the Investiture Controversy was reached at the Concordat of Worms in 1122. With the HRE issue settled, the Vatican could address the Islamic advance head-on.
Military Action
The 11th century Mediterranean world was engulfed in chaos due not only to the advances of the Turks and the ecclesiastical crises, but to the recurring conquests of Sicily whether by Varangians (Viking mercenaries), Muslims, or Normans.
The matter of exacting retribution for the Fatimid attacks on Christian holy sites and Turkish attacks on Pilgrims was still a hot topic, and a solution had been found by the Countess Mathilda: an armed pilgrimage. The idea ran entirely contrary to the purpose of a pilgrimage, which is to be undertaken without arms, and summarily rejected by the vast majority of Catholic prelates.
However, an agreement was reached soon thereafter. To compensate for the lack of the pilgrims’ ability to defend themselves, the task was given to others who would escort the pilgrims. Having once reached their destination, the defenders could lay down their arms and act as pilgrims.
With this in mind, Pope Urban II announced the Great Crusade in November of 1095 at the Council of Clermont with the intention of embarking for the Holy Land in the following summer of 1096 AD. A host of princes hailing from Flanders, France, Normandy, Provence, Taranto, and Wallonia answered the call and raised their armies.
Bear in mind that the Princes from modern-day Belgium were at that time in the Duchy of Lower Lorraine within the HRE. Likewise, the County of Provence belonged to the Kingdom of Arles that was also part of the HRE. Normandy was independent of France and had been joined to the Kingdom of England since the conquest of 1066 AD, less than 30 years prior.
The Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV had just been humiliated by Pope Gregory’s predecessor and refrained from entering the crusade, even though his contingent would have far overshadowed any of the others. The French king had just been excommunicated for adultery at the Council of Clermont and the English King declined to participate, allowing ambitious princes eager to test their mettle to take part instead.
Much to the discredit of the campaign, the First Crusade began with a violent, self-inflicting wound when two ambitious leaders, Peter the Hermit and Count Emicho von Leiningen, initiated a pogrom against the Rhineland Jews in spring of 1096 AD. Emicho had sought to become the Count Palatine in control the Electorate of the Rhine for some time and was also an opponent of Emperor Henry IV—as nearly all of the nobles were at that time—who had opposed his ambitions.
Emicho’s assault on the Rhineland Jews was seconded by Peter the Hermit, who led a rabble of lay people as pilgrims to the Holy Land. The attacks caused further social unrest and political disruption at a time when the HRE was still licking its wounds from Canossa.
Both Emicho and Peter were willing participants in the murder of the Jewish populations in the HRE, though Peter continued on to Constantinople while Emicho was busy slaughtering innocent people. By the summer of 1096 AD, the actual crusading force left Western Europe and arrived in Constantinople, integrating some of what was left of Peter’s group.
Meanwhile, Emicho’s army was chased into Hungary by the forces of Archbishop of Mainz and the Bishops of Speyer and Worms. The few who made it to Hungary were then killed by the Hungarians, as Emicho’s army had become nothing more than a host of murderous thieves. Emicho himself returned home, hated for not only slaughtering the chief financiers of the Rhineland, but also having failed to go on crusade.
Reviewing the Misconceptions
The crusades were an excuse for the indiscriminate destruction of Muslims and Jews, led by bloodthirsty Catholic prelates and dukes.
The crusades were purely politically motivated in order to curb the advance of Islamic influence in the Mediterranean.
The crusades were simply an economic endeavor by greedy Italian merchants.
The majority of the knights who embarked on crusade were not really Christian, because true Christian would not embark on such a campaign.
On the one had, the First Crusade was military response to Turkish advances in Anatolia and a check on the growing animosity shown to Christians by the Shi’ite regimes based in Baghdad and Cairo. On the other hand, the First Crusade presented the opportunity to re-unite the eastern Christians back into the Church by coming to their aid.
The Christians who responded to joining the crusade did so using the information that was available to them, including the knowledge of the increasing militancy of Islamic states towards Christian states. Many would have been personally affected by Muslim raiders from Spain and Anatolia, the industrious Muslim slave trade that regularly replenished its ranks from Christian European villages, and stories of the destruction of the holy sites.
Furthermore, the knights that embarked on the actual crusade in the summer of 1096 AD were of a different stock than the rabble of lay knights under the charge of Emicho von Leiningen in spring of 1096 AD. These knights primarily engaged adversarial armies, with the unfortunate exceptions of the standard looting and killing that followed successful city assaults in the Middle Ages. Thus, to group the two as one, is to ignore their obvious differences.
The First Crusade also had a monumental impact on the Mediterranean markets, not necessarily by design, but as a beneficial by-product of opening the ports to European merchants. To say that the crusades were caused by one variable is to disregard the tumult of the 11th century and the political digressions. The crusades were a highly complex period, interwoven with fiery emotions and the determination to answer the Islamic expansion in kind.
Check here for more reading:
Hartmann, Wilfried. Der Investiturstreit. 3rd ed. Enzyklopädie Deutscher Geschichte 21. München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2007.
Riley-Smith, Jonathon. The Crusades: A History. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
A slight correction: Emperor Henry IV groveled at Canossa in January 1077, not 1079.