Yet, in whatever reduced circumstances, when they took the cross these crusaders possessed some subsistence of their own and enjoyed sufficient freedoms to take the cross and enjoy the material privileges of protection of property, debt relief, delay in answering lawsuits and the right, even as tenants, to seek mortgages. However, most lacked freedom of choice or action outside the orbits of landed or urban elites. With few exceptions (see ‘The Children’s Crusade’, p. 258), the image of crowds spontaneously leaving fields or workshops to follow the cross is largely mythical, the fictions of preachers, commentators and canon law designed to emphasise the supposed spontaneity of religious commitment – taking the cross an epiphany of faith or a spasm of spiritual fervour. In reality, crusade recruitment relied on property and planning, while crusade armies, microcosms of the society that produced them, were held together by cats’ cradles of formal and informal mutual dependence, lordship, booty, handouts and, for many, pay, in cash and kind.
The results of the German crusade failed to match its promise. Beirut provided an important link between Acre and the north and, during preparations in 1196, Henry VI had obtained papal privileges for the fledgling, still non-military Teutonic Hospitaller Order. The truce of 1198 supplied the context and timetable for the next campaign, initiated in August 1198 by the new pope, Innocent III. Although Henry VI’s death prevented further exploration of imperial influence over Cyprus and Armenia, he bequeathed the policy to his son and ultimate heir Frederick II (b. 1194; king of Germany, 1212–50). Nonetheless, the German crusade demonstrated the effectiveness of the tested Third Crusade techniques of preaching, recruitment and funding; the need for central payment of troops; and the comparative ease and speed of sea passage to Palestine from friendly ports. The popularity of the crusade beyond the noble elites pointed to the creation of a broadening social engagement with the wars of the cross, a phenomenon exploited to the full in the remarkable pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216).
A PALACE IN BEIRUT
Sometime in the late summer or early autumn of 1211 an aristocratic German traveller Wilbrand of Oldenburg (d. 1233) arrived in the Levant port of Beirut. Wilbrand, son of Count Henry II of Oldenburg, was a canon of Hildesheim, later rising to the bishopric of Paderborn and archbishopric of Utrecht. Besides his main purpose in the east as ambassador from the German King Otto IV to King Leo of Armenia, Wilbrand took the opportunity to make a tour of the region, taking in the Holy Places, later writing up an account of his journey.41 Beirut had been recaptured from the Ayyubids by the German crusade of 1197 and by 1211 was in the hands of John of Ibelin (c. 1179–1236), known as the Old Lord of Beirut. The son of Balian of Ibelin and Maria Comnena, widow of King Amalric, John, half-brother to Isabel I (q. 1190–1205), acted as regent of the kingdom of Jerusalem from 1205 to 1210 on behalf of his niece, Isabel’s daughter, Mary of Montferrat (b. 1192; q. 1205–12). John rebuilt Beirut’s fortifications including the castle by the sea.
73. Beirut, a nineteenth-century view.
Within one of its towers, with wide views across the harbour on one side and fields and orchards on the other, John constructed domestic quarters, including what a clearly intrigued and awestruck Wilbrand described as a very ornate palatium, or hall where the lord and his courtiers could relax. The marble floor mimicked a sandy seashore, with ‘water agitated by a light breeze’, giving anyone walking on it the impression of wading through water. The trompe l’oeil effect was maintained by ceiling frescoes of scudding clouds in a windy sunny sky, ‘there the sun to define the year and months, the days and weeks, and the hours and seconds by its movement in the zodiac’, and walls of marble inlay imitating curtains. In the centre of the hall stood a pool of marble flowers, at its centre animals and a dragon fountain whose spray, in hot weather, cooled the air wafting in from windows on every side of the hall.
Almost as striking as what Wilbrand describes is his own alertness to natural details – the wading through water on a sandy shore; the chasing clouds; the views of ships and orchards from the windows, etc. Wilbrand also reveals that the workmanship on John’s palace came from Syrian Christian, Greek Orthodox and local Muslim craftsmen, a sign that beneath law and politics Outremer was positively as well as exploitatively multicultural, at least in major building works and prestige artistic projects.42 Similar cross-cultural cooperation and influences can be seen elsewhere in religious art and architecture and manuscript production. The quality of marble appears comparable to the best examples in the great mosques of Damascus or Jerusalem. The decorative programme in Beirut opens vistas onto the secular domestic lifestyle of Outremer Franks, or at least the fabulously rich ones such as John of Ibelin. Although a grand, privileged noble ambassador, Wilbrand cannot have been the only western traveller impressed by such visible evidence of the riches of the east. The great hall at Beirut cannot have been unique in lavishness. While not a stone, flake of paint or marble chipping survives from John’s palace, Wilbrand’s testimony suggests that behind the austere facade of castle walls the lords of Outremer lived in a style of luxury and cultural eclecticism not far removed from that of their Arab, Turk and Mamluk neighbours.
74. Mosaic of date palm, horses and water, Great Mosque, Damascus, a possible parallel to those in the palace of Beirut.
CHAPTER SIX
RESHAPING THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN: EGYPT AND THE CRUSADES, 1200–1250
Egypt and the Crusades
‘This is a mighty affair. Great forces have passed thither long ago on various occasions. I will tell you what it is like; it is like a lap dog yapping at a mastiff, who takes little heed of him.’1 The French nobleman and Levant veteran Erard of Valery was attempting to inject a note of realism into discussions in 1274 for a new planned attack on the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt while recognising the thirteenth-century consensus that the key to power in the Levant lay on the Nile.2 Although proving a geopolitical cul-de-sac, appreciation of the importance of Egypt was as old as the crusades themselves. When the armies of the First Crusade arrived in Syria in the winter of 1097–8, they immediately confronted Egypt’s importance and the threat it posed to western conquests in Palestine, negotiating with the Fatimids, each eager to seek common cause against the Seljuks. The thirteenth-century historian ibn al-Athir fancifully suggested the Fatimids had invited the crusaders into Syria for that purpose.3 Crusader-Fatimid discussions only ceased a few weeks before the crusaders advanced into southern Palestine to besiege Fatimid-held Jerusalem in June and July 1099. One veteran recalled the leaders debating whether they should attack Egypt: ‘if through God’s grace we could conquer the kingdom of Egypt, we would not only acquire Jerusalem but also Alexandria, Cairo and many kingdoms’. Against this, it was successfully argued that the expedition lacked sufficient numbers to have any chance of lasting success.4 The importance of Egypt was confirmed when the crusaders had to defend their capture of Jerusalem from a Fatimid relief army. Thereafter, no Latin ruler in Palestine ignored Egypt.
As the Fatimid caliphate crumbled, kings of Jerusalem took advantage with sporadic raids on the Nile Delta. By the 1160s they were extracting regular tributes from a succession of tottering regimes in Cairo. The stakes were of the highest. In 1200, during preparations for the Fourth Crusade, Innocent III admitted the insufficiency of land and population in the Holy Land alone to sustain many artisans and agriculturalists from the west.5 One way out of this bind was to leech onto Egypt’s monetised economy, already being tapped by Italian merchants. Short of conquest, protection money produced gold to pay for troops and defences. This was a game more than one could play. In the 1160s and 1170s the kings of Jerusalem competed directly with Nur al-Din and his Kurdish generals; the ultimate victory of Saladin secured for him precisely what the Latins had hoped for themselves, Egypt’s gold allowing him to reward followers and recruit vast companies of soldiers he then employed to overawe rivals in Syria and encircle the Latin principalities.6 The need to contain, accommodate, coerce or exploit Egypt remained a constant in all we
stern Holy Land strategies.
To recruit for an Egyptian war required a plausible narrative of urgency and obligation: Egypt was not Jerusalem. Sensitivity to criticism of diversion promoted the concealment by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade of the agreement with Venice in 1201 to attack Egypt.7 Crusade propagandists sought rhetorical devices from scripture: in Exodus, the path to the Holy Land had come from the Nile, a precedent Innocent III used in citing the overthrow of Pharaoh before the Fourth Crusade. The Exodus story invited spiritual analogies: Isaiah 31:3: ‘Egypt is man and not God’, the epitome of transient materialism.8 A second rhetorical device placed Egypt in a cosmic setting. Throughout western European media, Cairo and by extension Egypt was known as Babylon, injecting the right note of eternal spiritual conflict into the otherwise severely material business of dealing with a serious political problem. The military challenge was recognised by Richard I during the Palestine war of 1191–2 when, as part of his diplomatic dance with Saladin, he floated a plan in October 1191 to hire (at 50 per cent of cost) a Genoese fleet to ferry his troops to attack the Nile in the summer of 1192.9 The following century saw two major western invasions of Egypt (1218–21 and 1249–50); one aborted effort (1202–4); and earnest diplomacy backed by armed force, as in 1228–9 and 1239–41.
11. Eastern crusades of the thirteenth century.
The Fourth Crusade, 1198–1205
The first test of the policy came in 1198 when the new pope, Innocent III (1198–1216), summoned a crusade to shore up the gains and restore the losses of the German Crusade. The truce of 1198, set to last until 1204, only covered hostilities in Syria and Palestine, implicitly marking Egypt as a target. Innocent sought first-hand intelligence on the state of the Ayyubid Empire and Sultan al-Adil’s power. Logistics of an invasion had been made easier by the Latin conquest of Cyprus, the western alliance with Cilician Armenia and the recapture of Acre and other Palestinian ports. Innocent attempted unsuccessfully to engage Alexius III of Byzantium in an eastern Mediterranean coalition. The subsequent Venetian involvement in the Fourth Crusade was driven by the prospect of trading privileges in Alexandria and other Egyptian ports where Venice had been overshadowed by competitors such as Genoa. In the event, although the bulk of the Fourth Crusade diverted to Constantinople, where Venice already held the commercial whip-hand, some contingents separately reached Acre and joined a raid on the Nile in 1204.10
Recruitment for Innocent III’s new crusade began despite dynastic rivalries, civil wars and succession disputes in France, England and Germany that prohibited royal participation. Networks of preachers were appointed by the end of 1198, including a prominent charismatic publicist, Fulk of Neuilly. The death of Richard I in April 1199 opened the way for his allies in France, such as the counts of Flanders, Blois and St Pol, to reach accommodation with Philip II. Taking the cross operated as part of the process of reconciliation, binding former enemies to an honourable common enterprise approved by the king. In a coordinated sequence, the cousins, the counts of Blois and Champagne, took the cross at Ecry in November 1199; the pope appointed crusade legates and instituted a clerical income tax of a fortieth to help pay for the expedition in December 1199 (the failure of which cast a financial shadow over the whole enterprise); preaching was authorised from Ireland to Hungary; the count of Flanders, the count of Champagne’s brother-in-law, took the cross in February 1200, followed shortly by the count of St Pol. At meetings in the summer of 1200 at Soissons and Compiègne the sea route east was agreed and ambassadors despatched to Italy to negotiate a shipping contract. With neither Genoa nor Pisa interested, the ambassadors concluded a treaty with Venice in April 1201.
INNOCENT III
Lothar (1160/1–1216; pope 1198–1216) was the son of the count of Segni, a town south-east of Rome, and nephew of Pope Clement III (1187–91). After studying theology in Paris and canon law at Bologna, Lothar was appointed a cardinal by his uncle in 1190. His early writings show an intense engagement with the image of the cross as a metaphor for the spiritual reality of a Christian life. Although sidelined during the pontificate of the nonagenarian Celestine III (1191–8), he was quickly elected pope on the same day as his predecessor’s death. The election of a thirty-seven-year-old signalled a decisive move away from the line of cautious, usually elderly curial veterans who had tended to be preferred over the previous half-century. Innocent proved to be one of the most dynamic and effective popes of the Middle Ages. His policies revolved around the assertion of papal ecclesiastical and temporal rights and spiritual authority; the development of church reform through the evangelisation of the laity and the exercise of canon law; and the material protection of the faith against heretics and infidels. In the scope, detail and success of advocacy and development of the crusade, Innocent proved to be the most significant pope after Urban II. Innocent’s marriage of theological clarity to institutional frameworks established the character of official crusading for following generations.
75. Innocent III.
While in general terms more of a codifier than an absolute innovator, Innocent clarified the nature of the crusade indulgence to include remission of sins not just penance; instituted crusade taxation of the clergy (in 1215, after an aborted attempt in 1199); organised comprehensive papal licensing of regional crusade preaching across western Christendom (1198); proposed proportionate indulgences according to contributions below actual service (an idea canvassed as early as 1157 by Hadrian IV); and offered redemptions of crusade vows to any who wished to take the cross but were unable to fulfil their vows in action (1213, building on an idea of Clement III). Vow redemptions, clerical taxes and donations transformed crusade finance. From Innocent’s reign regular special prayers and processions for the crusade became familiar across western Europe, as did the appearance of chests in local churches to receive alms and donations. More indirectly, his sponsorship of the early Dominican and Franciscan friars presaged their later rise to dominate crusade preaching. The great crusade decrees Quia Maior (1213) and Ad Liberandam (1215) provided lasting rhetorical and administrative templates. Innocent extended crusade privileges to political conflicts in southern Italy and Sicily (1199); to campaigns against Languedoc heretics (1208–9), Spanish Moors (1212) and, partially, to the Baltic. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) provided the cornerstone of Innocent’s policies. Summoned to confront reform, heresy and the crusade, the council approved the instruments as well as principles in support of Innocent’s embracive concept of evangelising the laity through offering sacramental, penitential and physical protection in a Christendom directed by the Church and united under papal authority. The crusade combined Innocent’s core message of penance, redemption and active obligations demanded by Christ of all the faithful. Beyond political, polemical and administrative skills, Innocent was no armchair organiser. After losing control of the Fourth Crusade, he ensured close papal involvement in the Fifth, engaging in active proselytising. A seasoned preacher in Latin and the Italian vernacular, not afraid to extemporise, his sudden death in July 1216 may well have been hastened by his exhausting public preaching tour for his new eastern crusade.
The Venetian treaty, for all its later infamy, displayed understanding of what an invasion of Egypt required. For 85,000 marks, payable in four instalments from August 1201 to April 1202, the Venetians contracted to supply ships, including specialist horse-carrying huissiers, for an army of 4,500 knights, with horses, 9,000 squires and 20,000 infantry, along with provisions for men and beasts for up to a year. The Venetians would additionally contribute a fleet of fifty galleys at their own expense, as well as the crews for the crusader ships, who could have numbered as many as 30,000. This great armada, after mustering at Venice on 29 June 1202, was to sail directly to Egypt, avoiding breaking the 1198 Syrian truce. The scale of the enterprise matched the ambition. To fulfil the Venetians’ contractual obligation to build, equip and man the fleet, Doge Enrico Dandolo imposed a moratorium on all other commercial activity.11 While the cost per head was in tune w
ith previous shipping contracts, such as Philip II’s with Genoa in 1190, the Venetian deal assumed not only the deep pockets of the crusade leaders but also that large numbers of those not directly attached to them would take advantage of the transport on offer. The former assumption may not have been too fanciful. Count Theobald of Champagne, the leading protagonist of the crusade in northern France before his early death in May 1201, budgeted for 50,000 marks to pay for his own and hired troops. It was the failure of sufficient numbers of independent crusaders to arrive in Venice in 1202 that scuppered the Venetian deal, threatening the whole enterprise. While the northern French core of the leadership remained robustly committed to the Venetian deal, and publicised the muster widely across France and Germany, thousands of recruits sought other more convenient ports. Even some followers of the counts of Flanders and Blois used southern Italian ports rather than Venice, while a Flemish fleet partly sponsored by Count Baldwin made its own way to the Holy Land.12 The pope recognised this lack of unanimity by sending one legate to Venice and the other to Acre.
The World of the Crusades Page 26