The First Crusade (7 page)

Let those who in the past have been accustomed to spread private war so vilely among the faithful advance against the infidels
...
Let those who were formerly brigands now become soldiers of Christ; those who once waged war against their brothers and blood-relatives fight lawfully against barbarians; those who until now have been mercenaries for a few coins achieve eternal rewards.
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This approach was an offshoot of the Augustinian principle of 'right intention', requiring a Just War to be fought with restraint and control. Urban suggested that 'normal' violence was both illegal and corrupting, that only a war fought under regulated conditions could be considered licit or sanctified. But he proclaimed that in this campaign the regulating factor would be not the degree of brutality, but rather the 'alien' status of its target Earlier in the eleventh century, the papacy had encouraged lay society to adhere to the Peace and Truce of God movements, codes of practice which sought to limit the places and times at which violence might be inflicted. The underlying assumption of these conventions was that not all violence was equal in the eyes of God. For the Peace and Truce, the distinction lay in degrees of sinfulness: violence carried out on a holy day or against a cleric was worse than an attack upon a layman during the week. Pope Urban twisted and extended this idea, declaring that the crusade would be a distinct class of warfare, prosecuted under a particular set of controlled conditions. In this instance, however, the 'controlling' feature that established a 'right intention' had nothing to do with degrees of violence or the tempered prosecution of warfare. Instead, it was entirely dependent upon the 'alien' nature of the enemy to be confronted. The expedition would be 'just' because it was directed against 'inhuman' Muslims, not because it was executed with moderation. This may, to some extent, help to explain why the First Crusaders proved capable of such extreme brutality.
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A
new form of holy war

Perhaps the most significant feature of Pope Urban's sermon at Clermont was the formula of sanctified violence he associated with the proposed campaign. His predecessors, like Gregory VII, had experimented with the concept of holy war, seeking to promote the idea that military service in the name of God might bring participants a spiritual reward. But, more often than not, their calls to arms had attracted only a limited response. In one sense, Urban followed their lead: he promised that Latins who fought to protect their eastern brethren and recapture Jerusalem would enjoy a remission of sin, that is a cleansing of the soul. But he took a crucial further step, refining the ideological framework of sanctified violence to produce a new model of sacred warfare that, for the first time, truly resonated with the needs and expectations of medieval Europe. It was this new recipe for salvation that produced such an electric reaction among his audience.

Urban performed a relatively simple feat. He repackaged the concept of sanctified violence in a devotional format that was more comprehensible and palatable to lay society. Earlier popes may have argued that holy war could purify the soul, but Latin arms-bearers seem to have harboured nagging doubts about the efficacy of this notion. Urban sold the idea in terms that were familiar, convincing and attractive.

Western Christians were programmed to think of themselves as being critically contaminated by sin and conditioned to pursue a desperate struggle for purification through the outlets of confession and penance. Among the most recognised and fashionable of penitential activities in the eleventh century was the practice of pilgrimage. These devotional journeys to sites of religious significance were specifically designed to be gruelling, potentially dangerous affairs, and thus capable of purging the soul. Urban's sermon at Clermont interwove the theme of holy war with that of pilgrimage to produce a distinct, new class of sanctified violence: a crusade. In this sacred expedition, the purificational properties of fighting for Christ were married to the penitential rigours of the pilgrim's journey, creating ideal conditions for the cleansing of sin. In this First Crusade, Urban's target audience, the Frankish knights of western Europe, would be able simultaneously to pursue two of their favourite pastimes -warfare and pilgrimage - in a devotional activity that seemed to them a natural extension of current Christian practice. This crusade promised to engender an unquestionably purgative atmosphere within which the intense burden of transgression and guilt might be relieved. The allure of this armed pilgrimage was all the more intense because its ultimate target was the premier devotional destination in Christian cosmology, the most revered physical space on earth: the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem has a singular devotional resonance for three of the world's great religions, being the third city of Islam and the centre of the Christian and Judaic faiths. By the end of the eleventh century, it was popular in the Latin West to conceive of the city and its surroundings as a physical relic of Christ's life. Pope Urban was fully conscious of the almost irresistible appeal of the Holy City, and he took pains to underline its significance during his sermon. According to one account, he proclaimed that since 'we derive the whole of our Christian teaching from the fountain of Jerusalem' and because 'the [Holy] Land itself and the city in which Christ lived and suffered are known to be holy on the evidence of scripture', all Christian knights should feel impelled to answer his call to arms:

You, dearest brothers, must take the greatest pains to try to ensure that the holiness of that city and the glory of his Sepulchre will be cleansed
...
Y
ou, Christian soldiers, may justl
y defend the freedom of the fatherland by the exercise of arms. [And] if you believe that you ought to take great pains to make a pilgrimage to the graves of the apostles [in Rome] or to the shrines of any other saints, what expense of spirit can you refuse in order to rescue, and make a pilgrimage to, the Cross, the Blood, the Sepulchre?
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The spiritual rewards offered by Urban for making this armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem were immensely attractive, but not theologically audacious. Later, unsanctioned preachers did extend and simplify Urban's message, but the pope himself never suggested that joining the crusade would 'magically' guarantee all participants a place in heaven. To a modern observer, the very idea of fighting to purify one's soul might seem absurd and irrational, but Urban's vision of the crusade indulgence was firmly grounded in medieval reality. He conceived of the purificational properties of the crusade in terms that mirrored current devotional practice, incorporating existing language and ritual to produce a system that, in eleventh-century terms, offered a clear and rational pathway towards salvation.

Having modelled the crusade as an armed pilgrimage, Urban expressed the spiritual benefits of the campaign in penitential terms. Before 1095, under typical circumstances, a Latin knight concerned for the purity of his soul and fearful of the fires of hell would confess his sins to a cleric, receive an appropriate penance (such as fasting or a pilgrimage) and, upon completion of this punishment', be absolved. The expedition preached at Clermont represented a new form of'super' penance: a venture so arduous, so utterly terrifying, as to be capable of cancelling out any sin. Participants would still have to confess their transgressions to a member of the clergy, but the crusade would replace any necessary penance. Answering Urban's call to arms, therefore, offered the arms-bearers of Europe a powerful new penitential option, but one that was cloaked in the apparatus of accepted custom. For the first time, fighting in the name of God and the pope brought with it a spiritual reward that was at once readily conceivable and deeply compelling: a real chance to walk through the fires of battle and emerge unsullied by sin.
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AFIRE WITH CRUSADING FEVER

At first glance, it might appear that Pope Urban s sermon at Clermont had an almost miraculous impact, that his words fell like fiery sparks upon bone-dry tinder, instantaneously igniting the imagination and enthusiasm of Latin Christendom to produce an extraordinary, unprecedented, perhaps even inexplicable, response.

In the twelve months following the council of Clermont, somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 men, women and children, drawn from across the face of western Europe, answered the pope s rallying cry. This was, of course, not a full mobilisation of all Latin manpower. To be sure, more people stayed at home than took the cross. But it was, nonetheless, a gathering of human force and resources on a scale unparalleled in this age. Contemporary observers from within Europe and without gazed in wonder, sure in the knowledge that they were witnessing an event unique in living memory. Struggling to find an explanation for this phenomenon, they looked to the hand of God, or even the Devil. In the last century, historians have been driven to devote more analytical energy to rationalising this explosion of crusading fever than to almost any other feature of the expedition. They have grappled with a series of complex but crucial questions. What emotio
ns and impulses inspired such a
mass of Latin humanity to set out on crusade? How and why did the call to aid the eastern Churches and free Jerusalem spread across Europe with such power and rapidity? Did Pope Urban II actually appreciate the sheer elemental dynamism of the message he unleashed at Clermont?
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The answers to all these queries are, at best, circumspect and approximate. Just as we can do nothing more than estimate the number of thousands who responded to the crusading ideal, so too, with the surviving evidence, we can gain only a limited insight into their motivation and intent In any case, it would be a gross oversimplification to suggest that such a host of individuals might be driven by a single set of beliefs and desires. Likewise, the precise details of the mechanisms of crusade dissemination and recruitment, and the full range of Urban's expectations, must remain in the shadowy half-light between theory and demonstrable reality. This is not to suggest that these lines of enquiry are without value — just the opposite. Even the partial traces of evidence and explanation are profoundly revelatory. Observing the impact of the crusading ideal is akin to tracing the spread of a virulent disease within a living organism. The dispersal and effect of an illness may disclose a great deal about the nature of the afflicted host Similarly, even limited success in charting the response to Urban s preaching can furnish significant insights into the nature of eleventh-century society. It can, perhaps, even offer a brief glimpse into the essence of the medieval mentality. Exploring the motives and intentions of the First Crusaders as they took the cross may also help to explain their reactions to the appalling trials and remarkable triumphs of the next four years.

POPE URBAN'S EXPECTATIONS AND INTENTIONS

In the past, historians have suggested that when Urban II preached the First Crusade at Clermont he actually expected only a few hundred knights to answer his call - that, in effect, the pope was
caught entirely off guard by the tidal wave of enthusiasm that swept across Europe and, as a consequence, rapidly lost control of the shape and format of the expedition. In fact, a significant corpus of evidence suggests that he harboured fairly grand ambitions for this project and had a real sense of its potential scale and scope. Certainly in the months following the council of Piacenza (1-7 March 1095), where Urban first received the Byzantine appeal for aid, and perhaps even earlier, he developed the idea of a penitential armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem that might simultaneously bring military reinforcement to eastern Christendom and expand the sphere of papal influence. This is not to suggest that the crusade was the only thing on the pope's mind, but it was a significant feature of his evolving reform agenda. At the same time, Urban began making preparations to ensure that his proposed expedition would meet with a positive response, tapping into the surviving network
of
fideles beati Petri
established under Pope Gregory VII, including Matilda of Tuscany. It is striking how many of the prominent nobles who took the cross after Clermont were themselves
fideles,
or were connected to this group through marriage or family. Between his arrival in France in July 1095 and the start of the council of Clermont on 18 November, Urban visited a series of prominent monasteries, including his former house of Cluny. He also met and primed the two men whom he hoped would champion the crusading cause.
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Priming the core

The first of these was Adhemar of Le Puy, a figure who would become the spiritual shepherd of the First Crusade. Born into a noble family, possibly that of the counts of Valentinois, Adhemar was appointed bishop of Le Puy, in the Auvergne region of south-eastern France, at some point between 1080 and 1087. He had also probably completed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem before 1087. As a prominent Provencal bishop, Adhemar soon became an ally and associate of the region's most powerful secular ruler, Raymond of Toulouse. The bishop, evidently a firm supporter of the Gregorian papacy, was
chosen by Urban II to play a pivotal role in the forthcoming expedition. In August
1095,
soon after his arrival in France, the pope journeyed to Le Puy, where he must have met Adhemar. Here, and perhaps on other occasions over the coming months, the two discussed Urban s crusading project, agreeing a plan to orchestrate its reception and prosecution. Unfortunately, no record of these conversations survives, but we can be virtually certain that they took place because the events that followed were clearly stage-managed. Adhemar of Le Puy duly attended the council of Clermont and listened intently to Urban s crusading sermon on
27
November. Then, as soon as the pope fell silent, Adhemar stepped forward to take the cross, becoming the first ever crusader. According to one eyewitness, after Urban had preached the campaign to the East: