A History of the Crusades (6 page)

The many surviving accounts of miracles which took place at shrines provide important clues about the mood of religious sensibility around the time of Urban’s appeal. One example, a story from the shrine of St Winnoc at the monastery of Bergues in north-eastern France, serves as a good illustration. It should be noted that we are here dealing with a literary form, the miraculum composed according to an established generic typology. This means that the events are unlikely to have unfolded exactly as described, though they may have some basis in fact. The story’s true interest lies in the way that an idealized depiction of reality can itself throw light on actual attitudes and behaviour. The narrative proceeds as follows. It was Pentecost
(that is to say, the early summer) and large crowds had been drawn to the monastic church. Some were local people, others outsiders attracted by St Winnoc’s reputation. One day, as the faithful in the nave pressed forward towards the shrine, a small blind girl, who had become something of a mascot to the assembled crowd, found herself isolated at the back. She was therefore passed hand to hand over the heads of the throng until she reached the front, where some of Winnoc’s relics were being displayed to the crowd in a feretory, a portable reliquary. The people looked heavenward and prayed that, through the saint’s intercession, God might grant the girl her sight. For good measure they added that they would become more assiduous in their attendance at the church should they be given such a sign. Suddenly the girl became convulsed and the sockets of her eyes began to haemorrhage. A short time later she announced that she was able to see.

Several features of this story bear upon the religious culture which activated crusade enthusiasm. Of particular interest is the way in which the actions of the crowd illustrate the routinely communal nature of devotional behaviour. The girl was the central figure, of course, but the group participated fully at critical junctures: by selecting the girl for special attention, by co-operating in order to maximize her exposure to Winnoc’s
virtus
, and by collectively invoking the saint’s aid. The scene played out in the church served to cement existing solidarities—here the bonding between those who lived nearby—and also created a new group identity which united the locals and the disparate collection of pilgrims from further afield. The monks, moreover, were not passive bystanders. As the story stands it describes a spontaneous outpouring of pious energy from the laity, but it is reasonable to suspect a measure of prompting, even collusive stage-management, on the monks’ part. A consideration of where and when the events occurred further suggests that the monks of Bergues made it their business to create conditions in which the people’s religious impulses could be stimulated and directed. The fact that the feretory was being displayed when the miracle happened reinforces the point: the excitement had been built up until it exploded at the
critical moment. Once reached, moreover, the heightened mood could be sustained and channelled into a collective reaffirmation of faith by exploiting the tendency, very common at that time, to react to excitement or agitation through an expressive emotional outpouring. The author of the story understood the mood of the people well, using it to make an interesting comparison as he described how the faithful’s prayers, loud and undisciplined, merged with the more orderly chant coming from the monks in the choir. Here in microcosm was the eleventh-century Church in action: two groups, the lay and the clerical, engaged in a relationship of mutual reinforcement. Each performed a distinctive role (here symbolized by the spatial separation between nave and choir) but within the unifying context of a ritualistic devotion focused on the points of contact (the shrine, the feretory, and Winnoc) and geared to generating and maintaining communal enthusiasm.

One element of the story which might seem to jar is the crowd’s promise that it would become more devout if it were given a miracle. On one level this is a topos of the genre: the author was compressing into one manageable sequence of cause and effect a much lengthier process whereby Winnoc’s cult would have extended its reputation and insinuated itself into the locality’s devotional habits. But underlying the reference to the crowd’s promise there is also a deeper sensitivity to lay sentiment, evidence for which can be found elsewhere. Guibert of Nogent, for example, tells the story of some knights who dared a party of canons from Laon to procure a miracle cure from the Virgin Mary. The canons were daunted because the proposed beneficiary, a mute youth, seemed a hopeless case. But the Virgin came to the rescue, the youth began to utter sounds, and the knights abjectly acknowledged their error. Guibert’s purpose in reporting the episode was to glorify the Virgin and demonstrate the authenticity of her relics kept at Laon. But, like the writer of the Bergues miracle, he also implicitly points to clerical anxiety that lay piety was fixated with the idea of quid pro quo. The fear was that the faithful were inclined to vary the intensity of their religious commitment according to how well their material preoccupations, their anxieties, even their
curiosity, came to be addressed through contact with institutionalized religion.

The sort of fears implied by Guibert and the Bergues author have been seized upon by critics to argue that lay religiosity in the Middle Ages was superficial and literalistic, nothing more than the culturally acquired gloss upon basic psychological and social impulses. But this interpretation can be called into question. The critics make the mistake of setting standards for what constitutes genuine religious conviction which are anachronistic, since they are based on how devout people behave in confessionally pluralistic societies in the post-Reformation world. Other critics cling to the idea that medieval people were indeed capable of deep religious impulses, but that these were satisfied by tenacious pagan survivals from the pre-Christian era— charms, talismans, sorcery, divination, and so on—which were more immediate and trusted than what the Church had to offer. Here the mistake is made of applying much later standards to judge the medieval Church’s capacity to translate its own beliefs into other people’s behaviour. People in the eleventh century were not historically exceptional in seldom being able to sustain one level of pious commitment throughout their lifetimes: illness, the onset of old age, changes in personal status, and domestic and communal crises have regularly prompted heightened devotion in many religious systems in many periods. This is the norm. What matters is the base level of religious sentiment which is shared by most people most of the time and so serves as a stable cultural reference point. If this standard is followed, western European society on the eve of the First Crusade appears thoroughly Christian.

Clerical sensitivity to what seems a something-for-something religious mentality can also be interpreted positively as a sign of the Church’s strength, since the sort of reciprocity anticipated by the faithful at Bergues was one, slightly aberrant, offshoot of a fundamental principle which the authorities actively propagated: the idea that the relationship between this world and the next was governed by cause and effect. At the time of the First Crusade the Church taught that sins could be remedied, at least in theory, by acts of penance. For lay people penances usually
took the form of periods of sexual and dietary abstinence and a disruption of normal routine: penitents were not permitted, for example, to bear arms. Many pilgrimages were undertaken as penances. Attitudes, it should be noted, were beginning to change, as people wondered whether mere mortals were capable of nullifying their sinfulness by their own puny efforts without a helping hand from God’s infinite mercy. But the notion of treating penances as simply the symbolic demonstration of contrition to be undertaken after the sinner has been reconciled through sacramental absolution—the system which operates in the modern Catholic Church—was still undeveloped. In the closing years of the eleventh century the belief remained entrenched that penitential acts could suffice to wash away sin.

This does much to explain the potent appeal of the First Crusade, which Urban II conceived as an act so expensive, long, and emotionally and physically arduous that it amounted to a ‘satisfactory’ penance capable of undoing all the sins which intending crusaders confessed. Urban knew how his audiences’ minds worked. The son of a minor noble from Champagne, he had served in the cathedral of Reims and the great Burgundian abbey of Cluny before pursuing his career in the papal court. His background equipped him to understand the paradox at the heart of lay religious sentiment. Lay people offered ample proof of their awareness of their sinfulness, by undertaking pilgrimages, for example, or by endowing the monks and nuns who approximated most closely to the unattainable ideal of sinless human conduct. But their unavoidable immersion in worldly concerns meant that it was impossible for them to perform all the time-consuming and socially disruptive penances which could keep pace with their ever-increasing catalogue of misdeeds. The crusade message cut the Gordian Knot. Here at last was a spiritually effective activity designed specifically for lay people, in particular the warrior élites whose sins were considered among the most numerous and notorious. The laity could aspire, as Guibert of Nogent shrewdly expressed matters, to deserve salvation without abandoning its accustomed dress and by channelling its instincts in directions which accommodated its ingrained social conditioning.

The effect of a message framed in these terms was electrifying. The impact was doubled by Urban II’s tour of southern and western France between the autumn of 1095 and the summer of 1096. Moving as an imposing authority figure through areas which had seldom seen a king for decades, the pope drew attention to himself by consecrating churches and altars, honouring the localities through which he passed by means of elaborate liturgical ceremonial. (Once again the close relationship between ritual and communal religious excitement is evident.) The largest suitable urban centres were targeted as temporary bases: Limoges, Poitiers (twice), Angers, Tours, Saintes, and Bordeaux, among others. The particular merit of these places was that they were effectively clusters of prestigious churches which had long served as the focal points of their regions’ religious loyalties. They, as well as rural churches, now operated as centres for crusade recruitment. In the areas not covered by the papal itinerary other churchmen busied themselves in generating interest. Monks seem to have been among the most active recruiting agents: many surviving charters reveal departing crusaders turning to monasteries for spiritual reassurance and material assistance. Enthusiasm for the crusade was most intense in France, Italy, and western Germany, but few areas of Latin Christendom were entirely unaffected. As one historian memorably put it, a ‘nerve of exquisite feeling’ had been touched in the West. The proof was palpable, as between the spring and autumn of 1096 people in their tens of thousands took to the road with one aim—to free Jerusalem.

SIMON LLOYD

F
OLLOWING
the Council of Clermont and his call to arms (described in
Chapter 1
), Pope Urban II remained in France until September 1096. The projected expedition to the East was not the only reason for his extended stay, but Urban was naturally concerned to provide leadership and guidance in the formative stages of what would become the First Crusade, very much his own creation. He corresponded with Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, appointed as papal legate to the army, and with Raymond IV, count of Toulouse, the intended secular leader, whom he met at least twice in 1096. He urged various churchmen to preach the cross in France, and, as we have seen, he himself took the lead by proclaiming the crusade at a number of centres that he visited during his lengthy itinerary around southern, central, and western France in these months. He also dispatched letters and embassies beyond France, many in an attempt to control the response to his crusade summons.

Urban had intended that the crusade army should consist fundamentally of knights and other ranks who would be militarily useful. However, as the news of what he had proclaimed at Clermont spread through the West, so men and women of all social classes and occupations took the cross. Urban had lost control in the matter of personnel. One immediate consequence was the appalling violence unleashed against the Jews of northern France and the Rhineland, the first of a series of pogroms
and other forms of anti-semitism that would become closely associated with crusading activity in succeeding generations. Many, but by no means all, of those responsible were drawn precisely from those social groups that Urban wished to keep at home, especially bands of urban and rural poor.

These bands, led by men like Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans-Avoir, were the first to form and the first to depart, as early as spring 1096. Collectively, they are known traditionally as the People’s Crusade, but in reality they were essentially independent groups of the poor, lacking supplies and equipment, though some contained or were even led by knights. Streaming from northern France, the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and Saxony in particular, they sought to reach Constantinople, but many failed to get even that far. Their foraging for food and lack of discipline, combined with their sheer ferocity, naturally alarmed the authorities in the lands through which they passed, above all the Byzantines. Many were killed in the inevitable armed clashes. Those who did get through to Constantinople were hurriedly shipped across the Bosphorus in August 1096, after which they split into two groups. One attempted to take Nicaea but failed, the Turks surrounding and killing most; the other was ambushed and massacred near Civetot in October. The remnant fled back to Constantinople to join up with what has been identified as ‘the second wave’ of the crusade.

This, the backbone of the expedition, was formed of discrete contingents grouped around one or more great lords, representing the sort of effective military forces that Urban and Emperor Alexius had hoped for. The major contingents were those of: Count Raymond IV of Toulouse, numerically the largest; Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, and his brother, Baldwin of Boulogne; Hugh, count of Vermandois; Duke Robert of Normandy, his cousin Robert, count of Flanders, and his brother-in-law Count Stephen of Blois; and Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred, who led the Normans of southern Italy. Godfrey, Bohemond, Baldwin, and Raymond would become the first lords, respectively, of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the principality of Antioch, the county of Edessa, and the county of Tripoli. They began to leave for the East in
late summer 1096, gradually mustering at Constantinople later that year and in early 1097. Their long trek finally ended in success over two years later when Jerusalem fell to the crusaders on 15 July 1099. It had been an incredible journey. Against all the odds, and despite fearsome suffering and deprivation, especially during the ghastly protracted siege of Antioch in 1097–8, they had managed to liberate the Holy Places. It is no wonder that many contemporaries regarded it as miraculous.