The Glory of the Crusades
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While there is no doubt many were killed, we must not exaggerate what happened. Many inhabitants of the city (including Jews) were not killed but captured and ransomed; others were expelled from the city.181 The idea that this event, which occurred over 900 years ago, is the reason for Muslim hatred of the West is absurd and illustrates a complete misunderstanding of the Crusading movement and its impact on the Islamic world.
The event is well known because both Islamic and Christian chroniclers recorded it, although there are discrepancies among the various accounts: some claim the massacre went on for several days, others that it occurred on the first day only. The Christian sources do not agree on how many were killed; Fulcher records that 10,000 were massacred, while others indicate only several hundred. Some Islamic sources provide widely inflated numbers, claiming upwards of 75,000 killed (the city’s entire population was between 20,000 and 30,000). It is probable that anywhere from several hundred to 3,000 were slain by the Crusaders.
One interesting thing is the similar language used in the Christian sources to describe the bloodshed. The Gesta records that “the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to the ankles.”182 Fulcher of Chartres recorded that “within this Temple about ten thousand were beheaded. If you had been there, your feet would have been stained up to the ankles with the blood of the slain.”183 In a letter sent to Pope Paschal II, the Crusade leaders informed the pope about the killings, writing “and if you desire to know what was done with the enemy who were found there, know that in Solomon’s Porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of the Saracens up to the knees of their horses.”184 Finally, Raymond d’Aguilers recalled this event and wrote, “[I]t is sufficient to relate that in the Temple of Solomon and the portico crusaders rode in blood to the knees and bridles of their horses.”185 Most Christian accounts of the initial events in Jerusalem after the Crusader liberation utilize similar language in describing the amount of blood spilled by those killed, the same expression used by President Clinton: The blood of the slain was either ankle-deep, calf-deep, or up to the knees of horses.
What most modern people, including the former president, fail to understand is that this language was not meant to be taken literally or to leave a factual record of the numbers of those killed. Rather it was intended to recall passages of Scripture that medieval people would instantly recognize—such as Revelation 4:20, which says, “and the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle for 1,600 stadia.”186 In the Old Testament this image of “treading a wine press” was “without exception a metaphor of judgment.”187 (See, for example, Isaiah 63:3.)
The city in that passage from Revelation is a reference to Jerusalem as the true city of the saints, and the imagery of blood and divine wrath refers to the judgment of unbelievers.188 At first glance the precise figure of 1,600 stadia seems superfluous, but the figure would have been known in the Holy Land since it is the approximate length of Palestine as measured from Tyre to the border of Egypt.189 Blood flowing up to a horse’s bridle, meanwhile, “is figurate battle language and functions hyperbolically to emphasize the severe and unqualified nature of the judgment.”190 In using well-known language and imagery from Scripture, First Crusade commentators made the point that victory over Muslim forces throughout the Crusade and specifically at Jerusalem was ordained by God as a judgment against unbelievers.191
Although the killing of innocent civilians in Jerusalem cannot be justified, it can be explained as the actions of an army with “heightened emotions … which had been through terrible trials.”192 Some Christian sources suggest the killings were undertaken to cleanse the holy places from Muslim profanation and others see the massacre as retribution for Crusader sufferings throughout the campaign.193 Additionally, the military position of the Crusaders also influenced their actions, for “they had engaged in a race against time and the gamble had succeeded. But now they anticipated the coming of an Egyptian army and it was fear of leaving an enemy in the nest that brought about this atrocious killing.”194
War is a nasty affair and massacres were by no means the sole province of Christian warriors. The Muslim warlord Zengi massacred 6,000 Christian men, women, and children on Christmas Eve 1144 when he conquered the city of Edessa.195 Likewise Baybars, the thirteenth-century Mamluk general-turned-sultan of Egypt, pursued a policy of aggressive jihad in his campaigns against Christian settlements. After conquering Antioch, he ordered the city gates closed and locked with the entire Christian population trapped inside. All were massacred in a bloodbath so repulsive that it shocked even Muslim chroniclers.196
Defender of the Holy Sepulchre
After achieving their objective, the Crusaders were faced with the reality of protecting, consolidating and organizing the territory they had liberated during the First Crusade.
The noble leaders of the Crusade gathered on July 17, two days after their momentous and miraculous victory, to choose a leader for the city. The nobles called for Raymond of Toulouse to be named king, but he refused (possibly out of a religious sense of unworthiness but also possibly because he really wanted the crown but did not want to appear to desire it). The nobles then looked to Godfrey, a warrior who had performed heroically throughout the Crusade, and offered him the crown on July 22. He accepted, but refused to be called king, taking instead the title, “Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.”197
Going Home
Their vow fulfilled and Jerusalem secure, the vast majority of Crusaders still alive after their grueling three year journey turned west toward home.
Those who made it back to see loved ones again were a blessed few; eighty percent of those who participated in the First Crusade
never returned, most dying from disease and starvation rather than from battle wounds.198 A few Crusaders remained in the Latin East but they were never numerous and, as a result, the Crusader States always suffered from a lack of internal manpower to defend and expand their meager outposts. After the final battle at Ascalon, Godfrey was left with only 300 knights and 2,000 infantry to defend Jerusalem and other Crusader territory.199
It is estimated that only 11 percent of the surviving Crusaders remained in the Holy Land after the First Crusade, and by the year 1100 there were a maximum of only 4,000 Western Europeans total.200 This confirms that most participants did not view the Crusades as a source of wealth or an opportunity to increase land holdings. The Crusade was primarily a pilgrimage. When it was over, the pilgrims returned whence they had come.
113 New American Bible translation.
114 Fulcher, Chronicle, Book I, XXX. 1, in Peters, 93.
115 John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades 1000–1300 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 210.
116 Thomas F. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades Updated Edition (New York: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 10.
117 Urban II, Letter to the Faithful in Flanders, December 1095, in Peters, The First Crusade, 42.
118 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 1, The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (London: The Folio Society, 1994), 94.
119 There were reports of exorcised demons, healings, and conversions. Some believed Peter held a letter from heaven wherein God urged Christians to take the cross. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 16.
120 John France, Victory in the East—A Military History of the First Crusade (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 136.
121 The phrase “advance guard” is from Tyerman, God’s War, 94.
122 Tyerman, God’s War, 97.
123 France, Victory, 93.
124 Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 17.
125 France, Victory, 93.
126 Albert of Aachen in Peters, The First Crusade, 149.
127 Salomon bar Simson, Chronicles of the Crusades—Nine Crusades and Two Hundred Years of Bitter Conflict for the Holy Land Brought to L
ife Through the Words of Those Who Were Actually There, ed. Elizabeth Hallam (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 69.
128 Anonymous of Mainz in Peters, The First Crusade, 114.
129 Pernoud, The Crusaders, 126.
130 Tyerman, God’s War, 101–102.
131 Numbers from Albert of Aachen in Peters, The First Crusade, 110.
132 For the numbers of warriors, see France, Victory, 142. Raymond d’Aguilers, who was a participant, used the phrase “God’s Army” in his chronicle of the First Crusade. Crusaders possessing a special identity, see Tyerman, God’s War, 105.
133 Tyerman, God’s War, 119.
134 Henry IV, holy Roman emperor, had been excommunicated because of the Investiture Controversy. King Philip I of France was excommunicated by Urban II at Clermont for his bigamous marriage, and King William II of England had political issues with the Church and St. Anselm of Canterbury.
135 Fulcher of Chartres lists the following nationalities in his Chronicle: French, Flemings, Frisians, Gauls, Lotharingians, Allemani, Bavarians, Normans, English, Scots, Aquitanians, Italians, Dacians, Iberians, Bretons, Greeks, and Armenians. Fulcher of Chartres, Chronicle, Book I, XIII.4 in Peters, 68.
136 Hilaire Belloc makes this point: “For it was Gaul, between the Rhine, the Atlantic, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, which furnished by far the greater part of the armies which attempted to restore the Christian Roman world and throw back the Mohammedan in the East.” Crusades—The World’s Debate (Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 1992), 22.
137 Tyerman, God’s War, 117.
138 Ibid., 82.
139 France, Western Warfare, 159.
140 His brother Baldwin I and his cousin Baldwin Le Bourcq (II).
141 Tyerman, God’s War, 114.
142 Warren Carroll, The Building of Christendom—A History of Christendom, vol. 2 (Front Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1987), 538.
143 Ibid.
144 France, Victory, 155.
145 Ibid, 157.
146 The clearing of the old Roman road is in France, Victory, 122, and the placing of the crosses is mentioned in the Gesta in Peters, 180.
147 Tyerman, God’s War, 124.
148 Chronicle, Book I, X.7, in Peters, 64.
149 David Nicolle, The First Crusade 1096–1099—Conquest of the Holy Land (New York: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2003), 33.
150 France, Victory, 137.
151 Nicolle, The First Crusade, 45.
152 Fulcher of Chartres, Chronicle Book I. XIII in Peters, The First Crusade, 68.
153 Tyerman, God’s War, 131.
154 John C. Anderssohn, The Ancestry & Life of Godfrey of Bouillon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Publications, 1947), 73.
155 France, Victory, 222.
156 Ibid., 224.
157 Ibid., 208
158 Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitana, RHC Oc. 4, 372, in France, Victory, 230.
159 W. Stubbs, ed., Itinerarium peregrinorum et Gesta regis Ricardi (RS, London, 1864), trans. H.J. Nicholson as Chronicle of the Third Crusade (Aldershot: 1997), ch. 67, tr. pp. 127–8 quoted in Housley, Fighting for the Cross, 153.
160 Fulcher of Chartres, Chronicle, Book I, XVI.2, in Peters, 73.
161 France, Victory, 241.
162 Ibid., 267.
163 Pope Paschal II in his letter to the clergy in Gaul (1099) wrote: “[W]e decree that those be held in disgrace who left the siege of Antioch through weak or questionable faith; let them remain in excommunication, unless they affirm with certain pledges that they will return.” Peters, 297.
164 Some sources indicate Stephen was at Antioch, but deeming the siege a failure left one day before the Crusaders liberated it. Madden believes Stephen was in Alexandretta. Madden, New Concise History of the Crusades, 28.
165 France, Victory, 279.
166 Tyerman, God’s War, 144.
167 France, Victory, 283.
168 Ibid., 294.
169 Gesta Francorum in Peters, The First Crusade, 223.
170 France, Victory, 197.
171 Ibid., 148.
172 France, Victory, 311.
173 Fulcher of Chartres, Chronicle, Book I, XXV.2, in Peters, 84.
174 Numbers marching to Jerusalem from Raymond d’Aguilers in France, Victory, 3.
175 Raymond d’Aguilers in Peters, 254.
176 Ibid., 255.
177 France, Western Warfare, 118.
178 Tyerman, God’s War, 157.
179 France, Victory, 355.
180 Thomas F. Madden, “Inventing the Crusades,” review of The Crusades, Christianity and Islam, by Jonathan-Riley Smith, First Things, June/July 2009, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/05/inventing-the-crusades-1243195699, accessed July 31, 2013.
181 France, Victory, 355.
182 Peters, 255.
183 Chronicle, Book I, XXVII, 13, in Peters, The First Crusade, 91.
184 Peters, 294.
185 Raymond d’Aguiliers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, RHC Occ, iii, 300, trans. J.H. and L.L. Hill (Philadelphia: 1968), 128. in Tyerman, God’s War, 31.
186 The linkage of the passages in the various chronicles to Scripture is found in Walter Brandmüller, Light and Shadows, 31 & 157.
187 G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation—A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 775.
188 Ibid., 780. Beale also comments: “Perhaps uppermost in John’s mind is Joel 4:2, 11–12, 14, which says that God will enter into judgment with the ‘surrounding nations’ outside Jerusalem”; Ibid., 781.
189 Ibid., 781.
190 Ibid., 782.
191 John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill were the first to recognize the imagery used by Christian sources referenced scripture. Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades, vol. 3 The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004), 65.
192 France, Victory, 356.
193 Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” 25.
194 Ibid.
195 Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, trans. Jon Rothschild (New York: Shocken Books, 1984), 135.
196 Madden, New Concise history of the Crusades, 182.
197 “[A] position which recognized the claims of the Church while conceding practical power to the lay authority.” France, Victory, 357.
198 Housley, Fighting for the Cross, 7.
199 France, Victory, 14.
200 The eleven-percent figure is found in Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Early Crusaders to the East and the Costs of Crusading, 1095–1130” in Madden, The Crusades—Essential Readings, 161. Numbers of Western Europeans by 1100 is in Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades—A History, Second Edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 66.
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Warrior-Monks, Preachers, and the Second Crusade
Edessa is taken, as you know, and the Christians are sorely afflicted because of it; the churches are burnt and abandoned. God is no longer sacrificed there. Knights, make your decisions, you who are esteemed for your skill in arms; make a gift of your bodies to him who was placed on the cross for you.
Chevalier, Mult Estes Guariz201
We believe that it has come about through the providence of divine counsel that so great a multitude of the faithful from diverse regions is preparing to fight the infidel, and that almost the whole of Christendom is being summoned for so praiseworthy a task.
Pope Bl. Eugenius III202
The fifty-six year old Cistercian was exhausted. His normal spiritual practices placed great strain on his body and forty years of such practices had taken their toll. Pope Eugenius III had entrusted the holy monk with the task of generating support for the journey to the Holy Land. Despite his ill health, Bernard of Clairvaux had persevered in his mission and now, in 1146, his preaching journey was almost complete.
The Latin East
Although nearly all of the surviving First Crusaders journeyed home to Europe, a few settled in the Holy Land. Over the next fifty years, they consolidated, expanded, and solidified control of what became known as Outrémer,204 stretching 600 miles from north to south.
The activity of the First Crusade produced three Crusader States: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The County of Tripoli, another Crusader State, was established during the reign of King Baldwin I. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was “the emotional, political and strategic heart of Outrémer.”205 Important religiously and politically but not economically, the kingdom suffered greatly from succession problems throughout its history; only twice in its eighty-eight year history did son succeed father as king, and the two times it happened, one son was a minor and the other a sickly leper.
After the death of Godfrey de Bouillon, who had refused out of humility and faith to accept the title of king, his brother Baldwin hurried to Jerusalem to take the throne. He was “fittingly sad at his brother’s death but even happier with the expected inheritance.”206 Baldwin had no qualms about taking the title “king of Jerusalem” and was crowned in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Christmas Day, 1100.
Life in the Latin East
The Latin settlers were never numerous during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and were minority rulers of large Muslim populations.207 The “Franks,” as their Muslim neighbors called them, soon found that accommodation with the local populace was the path to growth and success. Relations between the Franks and Muslims were shaped by mutual benefit and general indifference. “Spontaneous uprisings against the Franks were rare; active collaboration with them was limited.”208