by S. J. Hodge
Call to arms
After nine days of discussion about other matters, on 27 November 1095, French-born Pope Urban II led the Council of Clermont’s clerical delegates to an open field, where he had invited the entire population of the city. He sat on his throne in the open air and addressed the huge crowd. Charismatic, good-looking and eloquent, he described the situation across Europe and in the Holy Land, the problems facing the Byzantine Empire and ultimately all of Christendom, and he urged those listening to take up arms to fight ‘the infidel’ alongside their brothers in the Eastern Orthodox Church for the liberation of the holy places. Although the notion of fighting was sinful for Christians, in the fourth century Bishop Augustine of Hippo had written that, with a worthy and honourable purpose and with peace as the aim, violence could be justified.
Believing at this stage that they would only be supporting the Byzantines, Urban spoke of the honour of chivalry and knighthood, reminding everyone that this was what Christendom was once famous for. All who participated in this holy war and turned their weapons on the enemies of Christ, he informed his captivated audience, would receive absolution for their sins. And while they were away fighting, he guaranteed that they, their families and their goods would be protected. Although no contemporary chronicler documented this at the time, it is said that this rousing speech was followed with thunderous, enthusiastic cries from the audience of: ‘God wills it!’ Red cloth crosses were distributed to those who promised to join the campaign and later, after taking their solemn vows, individuals sewed the [red] crosses on the left shoulders of their surcoats as a symbol of their commitment and to indicate their entitlement to certain privileges and exemptions, which the Pope had promised to any who joined the ‘Holy War’. This was the origination of the concept of ‘Taking the Cross’. The word ‘crusade’ developed from ‘crux’, the Latin word for cross.
After Clermont, Urban travelled around France, continuing to preach and urge the faithful to take the cross. Surprised by how earnestly the poor flocked to join up rather than the class of knights he had hoped to attract, Urban made some stipulations. The elderly and the infirm were not allowed to join, and married men had to ask their wives for permission to go. Wives were also invited to accompany their husbands if they chose. Only healthy, unmarried young men were permitted to become ‘Knights of Christ’ without any of these extra considerations. The Pope invited other Catholic countries to join, including England and Spain, but various issues precluded their wholehearted support. England, for instance, was still struggling for unity after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and the Spanish were fighting the Muslim armies in their own country. In the end, France gained the most recruits and automatically became the leaders of the Crusade, although their king, Philip I, could not accompany them as he had been excommunicated over his bigamous marriage.
Pope Urban II (c.1035–99) at the Council of Clermont from Sébastien Mamerot’s c.1490 lavishly illuminated manuscript Les Passages d’Outremer (Journeys to Outremer).
The Byzantine and Roman Churches
Since early Christian times, differences had emerged within the Church. The Byzantine Empire (or Byzantium) was established as the centre of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine when he converted to Christianity in 312 CE. He settled there and called the capital city New Rome, but it became known as Constantinople after him. It was later the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for over a thousand years. Meanwhile, the Latin (or Roman Catholic) Church continued developing in the Western Roman Empire. Geographically, the Byzantine Empire included Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa, while the Latin Church encompassed Western Europe and northern and western areas of the Mediterranean. The Byzantine Empire was predominantly Greek-speaking, whereas Latin was the principal language of the Catholic Church. The Byzantine Emperor controlled the Eastern Orthodox Church’s affairs and appointed its highest official, the Patriarch, while Roman Catholics regarded the Pope as their greatest authority. Unlike priests in Western Europe, the Byzantine clergy retained their right to marry. Byzantine art focused on the divinity and mysteriousness of Christ, while Roman Catholic art emphasized the humanity of Jesus and the Holy Family. Both sides prayed to images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints, but in the eighth century, the Byzantine Emperor prohibited the veneration of icons, saying it violated God’s commandment against worshipping ‘graven images’. The ban triggered fierce battles within the Empire and, from the West, the Pope excommunicated the Emperor. Although a later Empress eventually restored the use of icons, the conflict left great resentment in Byzantium against the Pope. In their church services, the Byzantines used leavened bread as a symbol of the Risen Lord while Latin Christians used unleavened bread as this was eaten by Jesus at the Last Supper as it was Passover. In 1054, further disagreements led to the Pope and the Patriarch excommunicating each other. This became known as the East–West Schism, or the Great Schism, and it divided the two Churches permanently.
Augustine of Hippo by Fra Filippo Lippi (c.1406–69). A Latin philosopher and theologian, Augustine is often declared to be one of the greatest Christian thinkers. While he insisted that Christians should be pacifists, he also argued that it was acceptable to fight in order to restore and maintain peace.
The Pope’s speech
Like many events of that period, there were no accounts written at the time of Pope Urban’s call to arms in Clermont in November 1095. Fulcher de Chartres, Baldric de Dol, Robert the Monk and Gilbert de Nogent were four contemporary writers who wrote accounts of the First Crusade, but they only include excerpts of the speech in order to enhance the drama of their narratives of the Crusade itself, which are all written years after the event and which differ from each other, so are probably subjective. The closest evidence we have of the original words is believed by most scholars on the subject to have been written in a letter by the Pope himself one month after the speech, at Christmas time in 1095, to those signing up for the Crusade:
Your brotherhood, we believe, has long since learned from many accounts that a barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient. More than this, blasphemous to say, it has even grasped in intolerable servitude its churches and the Holy City of Christ, glorified by His passion and resurrection. Grieving with pious concern at this calamity, we visited the regions of Gaul and devoted ourselves largely to urging the princes of the land and their subjects to free the churches of the East.
Eleventh-century public relations
The Pope’s call to arms was cleverly played to appeal to the sensibilities of devout Roman Catholics across Europe. While he knew that Emperor Alexius was appealing for military assistance against the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor, Urban purposely channelled the idea to suit his needs. The Latin Church had wanted to secure Jerusalem, with its sacred sites, for a long time. Likewise, Emperor Alexius had intentionally dwelt on the plight of pilgrims in Jerusalem for his own ends as he knew that this was the best way to ensure Western Christians’ support.
The People’s Crusade
Among the crowd listening to the Pope at Clermont had been a zealous monk in his forties, nicknamed Peter the Hermit, also known as Peter d’Amiens. Filthy, barefoot and wearing a long, coarse robe tied at the waist with a rope, Peter preached – to anyone who would listen – of the need to rescue sacred Christian sites in the Holy Land from the Muslims. His passionate appeal attracted a huge number of mainly poor followers, reportedly between 15,000 and 100,000 men, women and children, mainly from France and Germany. Rather than one organized march, the First Crusade evolved as a series of expeditions to the Holy Land, and Peter’s enthusiastic followers set off earlier than Urban II’s planned date of mid-August 1096. Having withstood floods, plague and famine at home, these impoverished, largely illiterate people believed that the Crusade would give them the chance to start new lives as well as securing them an assured passage to heaven. With few weapons, little experience of fighting, and no discipline, their
ragged march became known as ‘The People’s Crusade’. Peter and his assistant Walter Sans-Avoir (Walter the Penniless) led them overland through Germany and Hungary to Constantinople. On the way the rabble contingent among them began pillaging for food and attacking local inhabitants, and were soon counter-attacked by stronger local armies. Undaunted, the straggling marchers began discharging their religiously fuelled passions by calling the Jewish inhabitants of various other districts they passed through ‘murderers of Christ’, offering them the choice of conversion to Christianity or death. By the time they reached the Rhine, one of Europe’s major trade routes and an area that had been populated heavily by Jews for centuries, the mob was completely out of control. They began looting and sacking houses and synagogues and massacring entire Jewish communities. Approximately 8,000 Jews died. To be rid of the Crusaders, the horrified Alexius organized their speedy passage across the River Bosphorus. As they reached Asia Minor, they came face-to-face with the Seljuk Turks who completely overpowered and massacred nearly all of them. The People’s Crusade was over.
Peter the Hermit leading ‘The People’s Crusade’ from Les Passages d’Outremer. This illustration shows the first, unofficial Crusaders, about to be massacred by the Seljuk Turks in a surprise attack.
The First Crusade
Meanwhile, the main contingent of the Crusade was travelling to Constantinople. Of the thousands who went, only about a quarter were nobles or knights. The rest consisted of poor men, women and children, plus their donkeys, carts and dogs. Most had never before left their towns and villages. Alexius was appalled by the arrival of this unruly and undisciplined mass, many of whom appeared to be nothing more than ruffians, and who camped outside his capital city’s walls through the winter of 1096–7. They were not the small, well-armed force of Christian knights he had envisaged when he had asked the Pope for help, and many began pillaging around Constantinople. Concerned that they could not be controlled and that most were only there to reach Jerusalem on a kind of glorified pilgrimage, he made their leaders swear an oath that they would ‘restore to the Empire whatever towns, countries or forts they took which had formerly belonged to it’. Eventually the Crusader leaders agreed to the oath and they marched on to the ancient city of Nicaea (within present-day Iznik in Turkey), which had been captured by the Seljuk Turks in 1071. Strongly defended by walls and a lake, it was difficult to surmount, but the Christian armies laid siege and within five weeks, Nicaea was regained. Several other battles followed as the Crusaders marched towards the city of Antioch (present-day Antakya in southern Turkey, near the border with Syria). Previously a Byzantine stronghold and famous for never having fallen except by treachery, the city walls of Antioch were almost impenetrable.
Arriving at the city on 20 October 1097, the Crusaders blockaded the main city gates of Antioch, imprisoning the inhabitants and preventing relief forces from getting through. After three months, by January 1098, their own supplies were gravely diminished, many were dying of starvation and others were deserting. Nevertheless, the weakened and much reduced Crusaders managed to gain entry to the city, but they were immediately trapped inside by an external relief-force of 75,000 Seljuk Turks who had just arrived from Mosul (in contemporary Iraq). Meanwhile, some distance away, the Byzantine army was marching towards Antioch to help the crusading Latin army, when several deserters reached them and reported that the Crusaders had all starved to death outside the city. Believing therefore that the situation was hopeless, the Byzantines returned to Constantinople, leaving the Latin army trapped inside Antioch.
Leaders of the First Crusade
Although they had to organize and discipline many inexperienced Crusaders, the leaders of the First Crusade included some of the most eminent members of European knighthood. Count Raymond de Toulouse headed a band of volunteers from Provence. Godfrey de Bouillon and his brother Baldwin commanded a force of French and German men. Hugh de Vermandois, the younger brother of King Philip I of France; William the Conqueror’s eldest son, Robert of Normandy; Count Robert II of Flanders; Bohemond, Prince of Taranto, and his nephew Tancred; and Stephen II, the Count of Blois, all led troops into battle, with varying degrees of courage and ingenuity.
An illumination by the Fauvel Master in 1337, showing the capture of a Muslim city by Christian crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon in the First Crusade, from The History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by William of Tyre.
The Miracle of the Lance
Finding themselves outnumbered, weakened and ensnared, it seemed that the First Crusade had ended before it had really started. Then, on 10 June 1098, a peasant called Peter Bartholomew was admitted to the presence of papal legate Bishop Adhemar, and Raymond de Toulouse, the most important noble of the Crusade. Before the Crusaders had set off, the Pope had named Bishop Adhemar as his representative and the spiritual leader of the expedition. The idea of the red cloth cross worn on the shoulder had come directly from Adhemar’s example. In the presence of these two august men, imprisoned within the city of Antioch, Peter Bartholomew described his recurrent visions. He claimed that Christ and St Andrew had come to him and told him that the lance that had pierced the side of Christ on the Cross was buried beneath the high altar in St Peter’s Cathedral in Antioch. The Holy Lance, also known as the Holy Spear, the Spear of Christ or the Spear of Longinus (after the Roman soldier who wielded it), is mentioned in the Bible, but only in the Gospel of John. It was used to make sure that Jesus was dead: ‘one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out’ (John 19:34).
Bishop Adhemar was sceptical, as he had seen what had been claimed to be part of the Holy Lance in Constantinople, but Raymond was intrigued and when the story spread among the Crusaders a ripple of hope emerged that had previously seemed unimaginable. The next day, Stephen of Valence, a monk accompanying the Crusade also sought an audience with Adhemar and Raymond. He too reported a vision, this time where Christ and the Virgin Mary had promised to help the demoralized troops. Adhemar remained suspicious, but when on 14 June, a meteor was seen to fall into the Turkish camp, it was deemed a positive omen by the Crusaders, and Bishop Adhemar gave permission for digging to start in the cathedral. The following day, inside St Peter’s Cathedral in Antioch, Raymond de Toulouse, the historian Raymond d’Aguilers, William, Bishop of Orange, Peter Bartholomew and a few others began to dig beneath the paved floor under the altar. Nothing was found until Peter jumped into the pit and unearthed a relic of a spear point which he proclaimed was the Holy Lance. When told, Bishop Adhemar continued to believe the object to be a fake and Bartholomew to be a fraud, but Raymond de Toulouse and the others present took this as a divine sign that the Crusaders had God on their side. It is impossible to verify now what really happened. The trusted historian on the dig, Raymond d’Aguilers, reported that he had seen the iron in the ground before Peter Bartholomew exposed it, contesting that Peter had put it there as several sceptics believed. Whatever the object was or how it was found, the excitement in the city was intense as word of the discovery spread. Peter then reported another vision in which St Andrew instructed the Crusader army to fast for five days (although they were already starving), after which they would be victorious. There was great rejoicing among the Crusaders and they duly fasted. On 28 June, they broke out of Antioch led by their best soldier, the Norman warrior Bohemond, Prince of Taranto, with the Holy Lance carried by Raymond d’Aguilers at the front. Although desperately weak from hunger, they were in an exalted mood and some cried out that they could see celestial cavalrymen on white horses riding to help them, bearing white banners and led by St George. They should have been no match for the far larger and better-equipped Turkish and Arab force, but a great deal of in-fighting had occurred with the Turks and Arabs, leaving their morale as low as the Christians’ was high, and they broke quickly under the unexpected Crusader attack. Antioch was once more in Christian hands; but rather than return it to the Byzantines who had deserted them, Bohemond remained there as Prince o
f Antioch, while the rest of the Crusaders marched on to Jerusalem.
Raymond de Toulouse kept the lance for a time, but rumours of it being a hoax grew as people realized that other Holy Lances were in existence. In the sixth century, a pilgrim, Antoninus of Piacenza had related that in the Basilica of Mount Zion he saw ‘the crown of thorns with which Our Lord was crowned and the lance with which He was struck in the side’. After Jerusalem was captured by Persian forces during the following century, according to contemporary writings, a piece of the Holy Lance was taken to Constantinople and placed in the church of Hagia Sophia, and later moved to the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. Much later, it was sold to Louis IX of France who enshrined it with the Crown of Thorns, but the relics both disappeared during the 18th-century French Revolution. The larger portion of the lance was mentioned as being in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem around 670, but there is no further mention of it being there. This could be the portion of the lance that was sometimes attributed to being in the Templars’ keeping, but there is no clear explanation of how they found it when so many others had not in the centuries between its disappearance and their arrival in Jerusalem.