The Middle Ages

1. The Middle Ages The Crusades You did WHAT?!?

2. What people say about the Crusades • In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that “when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was “still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”

3. What people say about the Crusades • From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged. • But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.

4. Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world. • Nothing could be further from the truth, and even a cursory chronological review makes that clear. In A.D. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. • Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian.

6. Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world. • By A.D. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. • The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula. Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.

7. Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world. • The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about A.D. 800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and began to island-hop across from North Africa toward Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland by 837.

8. Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world. • A confused struggle for control of southern and central Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. • Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.

9. Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich. • One version of Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont in 1095 urging French warriors to embark on what would become known as the First Crusade does note that they might “make spoil of [the enemy’s] treasures,” but this was no more than an observation on the usual way of financing war in ancient and medieval society.

10. Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich. • As Fred Cazel* has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.” From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive. *Professor in the history department at the University of Connecticut from 1948-1988. He was actively involved in the Medieval Studies Program.

11. Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich. • The popes resorted to ever more desperate ploys to raise money to finance crusades, from instituting the first income tax in the early thirteenth century to making a series of adjustments in the way that indulgences were handled that eventually led to the abuses condemned by Martin Luther. • In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted. Most medieval people were quite well aware of this, and did not consider crusading a way to improve their financial situations.

12. Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives. • This has been a very popular argument, at least from Voltaire on. It seems credible and even compelling to modern people, steeped as they are in materialist worldviews. And certainly there were cynics and hypocrites in the Middle Ages—beneath the obvious differences of technology and material culture, medieval people were just as human as we are, and subject to the same failings.

13. Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives. • However, like the first two myths, this statement is generally untrue, and demonstrably so. For one thing, the casualty rates on the crusades were usually very high, and many if not most crusaders left expecting not to return. At least one military historian has estimated the casualty rate for the First Crusade at…

14. Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives. • However, like the first two myths, this statement is generally untrue, and demonstrably so. For one thing, the casualty rates on the crusades were usually very high, and many if not most crusaders left expecting not to return. At least one military historian has estimated the casualty rate for the First Crusade at… • 75 percent!

15. Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives. • The statement of the thirteenth-century crusader Robert of Crésèques, that he had “come from across the sea in order to die for God in the Holy Land”—which was quickly followed by his death in battle against overwhelming odds—may have been unusual in its force and swift fulfillment, but it was not an atypical attitude.

16. Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives. • The statement of the thirteenth-century crusader Robert of Crésèques, that he had “come from across the sea in order to die for God in the Holy Land”—which was quickly followed by his death in battle against overwhelming odds—may have been unusual in its force and swift fulfillment, but it was not an atypical attitude.

17. Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives. • Crusaders were not drafted. Participation was voluntary, and participants had to be persuaded to go. The primary means of persuasion was the crusade sermon, and one might expect to find these sermons representing crusading as profoundly appealing. • This is, generally speaking, not the case. In fact, the opposite is true: crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. That this was the reality of crusading was well known anyway.

18. Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians. • Muslims had been attacking Christians for more than 450 years before Pope Urban declared the First Crusade. They needed no incentive to continue doing so.

19. Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians. • Up until quite recently, Muslims remembered the crusades as an instance in which they had beaten back a puny western Christian attack. • An illuminating vignette is found in one of Lawrence of Arabia’s letters, describing a confrontation during post–World War I negotiations between the Frenchman Stéphen Pichon and Faisal al-Hashemi (later Faisal I of Iraq). Pichon presented a case for French interest in Syria going back to the crusades, which Faisal dismissed with a cutting remark: “But, pardon me, which of us won the crusades?”

20. Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians. • Most of the Arabic-language historical writing on the crusades before the mid-nineteenth century was produced by Arab Christians, not Muslims, and most of that was positive.  • There was no Arabic word for “crusades” until that period, either, and even then the coiners of the term were, again, Arab Christians. • It had not seemed important to Muslims to distinguish the crusades from other conflicts between Christianity and Islam.

21. Big Ideas • Crusades – Weren’t an evil plot by Christians.

24. FACT - Mohammed • Born ~ 570 AD • Lived in Mecca • At age 40, he reported being visited by Gabriel in a cave and received his first revelation from God. • Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" (lit. islām) to him is the only way acceptable to God, and that he was a prophet and messenger of God. • Muhammad gained few early followers and was ran out of town.

25. FACT – Why was he ran out of town? • Early Arabic religion was pagan. • Many gods, ~360. • Some scholars think Allah was one of the pagan gods. • Merchants made a TON of money selling idols and other trinkets of all the many gods. • Mohammed was ruining their profits. • And the Kaaba…

26. FACT – Why was he ran out of town?

27. FACT – The Kaaba • The Quran contains several verses regarding the origin of the Kaaba, it states that the Kaaba was the first House of Worship, and that it was built or re-built by Ibrahim and Ishmael on God's instructions. • (Abraham, his son with his servant woman, Hagar.) • Ibn Kathir (1300-1373), the famous commentator on the Quran, mentions two interpretations among the Muslims on the origin of the Kaaba. One is that the shrine was a place of worship for Angels before the creation of man. Later, a temple was built on the location by Adam and Eve which was lost during the flood in Noah's time and was finally rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael as mentioned later in the Quran.

28. FACT – The Kaaba • It is hard to analyze the rock because of its significance to Muslims, but the best guess is that it is a meteorite. • The Kaaba was considered a holy and sacred site by the local pagan Arabs before Mohammed “remade” it into an Islamic shrine. • As part of the pilgrimage, Muslims walk seven times around the Kaaba in a counter-clockwise direction.

29. FACT – Where did he go?

31. FACT – Where did he go? • Goes to Medina (this starts the Muslim calendar). • Lives there for 8 years. • Becomes politically powerful. • Begins raids on Meccan caravans. • Allah permits attacks on your enemy to take their stuff. • Comes back to Mecca with an army of 10,000 and seizes the city with little bloodshed.

32. FACT - Islam • The 'Five Pillars' of Islam are the foundation of Muslim life: • Shahada: Faith – There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet • Salat: Prayer – Pray 5 times a day, facing Mecca • Zakāt: Charity - charitable giving based on accumulated wealth. • Sawm: Fasting – e.g. Ramadan • Hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca – at least once, if able

33. FACT – Islam's Spread • Quran (8:38-39) - “Say to those who have disbelieved, if they cease (from disbelief) their past will be forgiven... And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world ]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.” • Muslims are told to fight unbelievers until they are either dead, converted to Islam, or in a permanent state of subjugation under Muslim domination.

34. FACT – Islam's Spread • Through the centuries, Muslims have forced Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, pagans and others to accept Islam, either by bluntly offering them death as an alternative, or by making their lives so miserable (ie. taxes, denial of rights...) that the conquered eventually convert to Islam under the strain.

35. FACT - Crusades • The crusades were a series of holy warscalled bypopes with the promise of indulgences for those who fought in them and directed against external and internal enemies of Christendom for the recovery of Christian property or in defense of the Church or Christian people. • Crusades were characterized by the taking of vows and the granting of indulgences to those who participated.

36. FACT - Crusades • Like going on pilgrimage, to which they were often likened, crusading was an act of Christian love and piety that compensated for and paid the penalties earned by sin. • It marked a break in earlier Christian medieval conceptions of warfare in that crusades were penitential warfare. Crusades combined the ideas of: a) Holy War and b) and Pilgrimage to produce the concept of "indulgence" (remission of penance and/or sin granted by papacy for participation in sacred activity).

37. FACT - Crusades • Difference between Augustinian “just war” and “crusade”: • The standard for a Christian “just war” as developed by Augustine (c. A.D. 400) is: “rightful intention on the part of the participants, which should always be expressed through love of God and neighbour; a just cause; and legitimate proclamation by a qualified authority.” (Quoted from J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Yale University, 1987.)

38. FACT - Crusades • The doctrine of holy war/crusade added two further assumptions: • 1) Violence and its consequences–death and injury–are morally neutral rather than intrinsically evil, and whether violence is good or bad is a matter of intention. (The analogy is to a surgeon, who cuts into the body, thus injuring it, in order to make it better/healthier.) • 2) Christ is concerned with the political order of man, and intends for his agents on earth, kings, popes, bishops, to establish on earth a Christian Republic that was a “single, universal, transcendental state’ ruled by Christ through the lay and clerical magistrates he endowed with authority.

39. FACT – 1st Crusade • Pope Urban II calls for a crusade on November 27, 1095. • It started as a widespread pilgrimage in western Christendom and ended as a military expedition by Roman Catholic Europe to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquests of the Levant (632–661), ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem in 1099. • They also established the crusader states of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch, and the County of Edessa.

40. FACT – 1stCrudsade

41. FACT – 2nd Crusade • The Second Crusade (1145–1149) was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa the previous year to the forces of Zengi, a Muslim general/leader/prince/atabeg. • The Second Crusade was announced by Pope Eugene III, and was the first of the crusades to be led by European kings, namely Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, with help from a number of other European nobles.

42. FACT – 2nd Crusade • The armies of the two kings marched separately across Europe. After crossing Byzantine territory into Anatolia, both armies were separately defeated by the Seljuq Turks. The main Western Christian source, Odo of Deuil, and Syriac Christian sources claim that the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos secretly hindered the crusaders' progress, particularly in Anatolia, where he is alleged to have deliberately ordered Turks to attack them.

43. FACT – 2nd Crusade • Louis and Conrad and the remnants of their armies reached Jerusalem and participated in 1148 in an ill-advised attack on Damascus. • The crusade in the east was a failure for the crusaders and a great victory for the Muslims. It would ultimately have a key influence on the fall of Jerusalem and give rise to the Third Crusade at the end of the 12th century.

44. FACT – 3rd Crusade • The Third Crusade (1189–1192), also known as The Kings' Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin (Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb). • Led by Saladin, Egyptian and Syrian forces were used to shrink the Christian states and recapture Jerusalem in 1187. • The campaign was largely successful, capturing the important cities of Acre and Jaffa, and reversing most of Saladin's conquests, but it failed to capture Jerusalem.

45. FACT – 3rd Crusade • Spurred by religious zeal, King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France (known as Philip Augustus) ended their conflict with each other to lead a new crusade. • The death of Henry in 1189, however, meant the English contingent came under the command of his successor, King Richard I of England (known as Richard the Lionheart, in French Cœur de Lion). • The elderly Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa also responded to the call to arms, leading a massive army across Anatolia, but he drowned in a river in Asia Minor on June 10, 1190 before reaching the Holy Land.

46. FACT – 3rd Crusade • Spurred by religious zeal, King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France (known as Philip Augustus) ended their conflict with each other to lead a new crusade. • The death of Henry in 1189, however, meant the English contingent came under the command of his successor, King Richard I of England (known as Richard the Lionheart, in French Cœur de Lion). • The elderly Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa also responded to the call to arms, leading a massive army across Anatolia, but he drowned in a river in Asia Minor on June 10, 1190 before reaching the Holy Land.

47. FACT – 3rd Crusade • On September 2, 1192, Richard the Lion-Hearted and Saladin finalized a treaty granting Muslim control over Jerusalem but allowing unarmed Christian pilgrims and merchants to visit the city. Richard leaves.

48. FACT – 4th Crusade • It gets ugly from here on out. • The Fourth Crusade (1202–04) was a Western European armed expedition originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. • Instead, a sequence of events culminated in the Crusaders sacking the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire.

49. FACT – 4th Crusade • The Venetians! • By May 1202 the bulk of the crusader army was collected at Venice, although with far smaller numbers than expected: about 12,000 (4-5,000 knights and 8,000 foot soldiers) instead of 33,500. • The Venetians had performed their part of the agreement: there awaited 50 war galleys and 450 transports—enough for three times the assembled army. • The Venetians, under their aged and blind Doge Dandolo, would not let the crusaders leave without paying the full amount agreed to, originally 85,000 silver marks. (1 mark ~ 8 oz.)

50. FACT – 4th Crusade • The Venetians! • Dandolo and the Venetians considered what to do with the crusade. It was too small to pay its fee, but disbanding the force gathered would harm Venetian prestige and cause significant financial and trading loss. • Following the Massacre of the Latins of Constantinople in 1182, the ruling Angelos dynasty had expelled the Venetian merchant population with the support of the Greek population. • WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE A VENETIAN?