The Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  To imagine otherwise goes beyond fraudulence. It plays on a cheap historicism that at once inflames, debases, and confuses current conflicts, draining them of rational meaning or legitimate solution. The Crusades reflected central human concerns of belief and identity that can only be understood on their own terms, in their own time; so, too, their adoption and adaptation by later generations. While it is tempting to draw conclusions derived from geographical congruity or superficial political similarities, the land in which Jakelin de Mailly fell over eight hundred years ago and the cause for which he died held truths for his time, not ours.

  FURTHER READING

  •

  Historically, the study of the Crusades has usually been marked by prejudice, bias, and judgmentalism. Very little surviving primary evidence is without inherent distortion. Later interpretations have consistently reflected the concerns of the historians rather than objective assessment of the phenomenon. Medieval observers represented the Crusades in a scriptural context as signifiers of divine providence. Since the sixteenth century, shifting religious, political, and intellectual fashions have determined very different presentations: confessional or philosophical disdain, romantic exoticism, assumptions of cultural conflict, colonial apologetics, imperialism, and nationalism. Some have always sought to frame the Crusades as a mirror of the modern age, reassuring or troubling in similarities or contrasts. Modern scholarship, while embracing a far wider range of sources, from canon law to archaeology, is no less prone to factionalism, the influence of politics, as in the Israeli school led by Joshua Prawer, or of conflicting metaphysical constructs of the past. On the contentious issue of definition, the ecclesiastical historian Giles Constable has characterized the competing interpreters as generalists, who locate the origins and nature of crusading in the long development of Christian holy war before 1095; popularists, who favor the idea that crusading emerged as an expression of popular piety; traditionalists who insist on the centrality of Jerusalem and the Holy Land to legitimate crusading; and pluralists, who concentrate on pious motivation, canon law, and papal authorization to include all conflicts enjoying the privileges of wars of the cross regardless of destination or purpose. Such academic disputes may appear arcane. Yet they matter if understanding of the past is to be liberated from oversimplified and misleading public history and the maw of modern polemic. Having previously wreaked so much havoc, the Crusades should not be recruited to the battlegrounds of the twenty-first century nor yet condescendingly condemned as one of Christianity’s legion of aberrations.

  GENERAL

  M. Barber, The New Knighthood (Cambridge, 1994)

  C. Erdmann, The Origins of the Idea of Crusading, tr. Marshall W. Baldwin and Walter Goffart (Princeton, 1977) (the classic generalist text)

  A. Forey, The Military Orders (London, 1992)

  C. Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999)

  N. Housley, The Later Crusades (Oxford, 1992) (pluralist)

  H. E. Mayer, The Crusades, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1988) (traditionalist)

  J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (London, 1987) (pluralist)

  J. Riley-Smith (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995)

  J. Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, 3rd edn. (London, 2002) (pluralist)

  S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades (Cambridge, 1951–54) (traditionalist, once described as “the last great medieval chronicle”)

  C. Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (London, 1998)

  HOLY WAR

  N. Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe 1400-1536 (Oxford, 2002)

  J. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels (Liverpool, 1979)

  F. H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975)

  HOLY LANDS

  R. Barlett, The Making of Europe (London, 1993)

  E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, 2nd edn. (London, 1997)

  D. Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (London, 1978)

  J. Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (London, 1972)

  R. C. Smail, Crusading Warfare (Cambridge, 1956)

  THE BUSINESS OF THE CROSS

  J. Brundage, Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, 1969)

  P. Cole, The Preaching of the Cross to the Holy Land 1095—1270 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991)

  S. Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade 1216-1307 (Oxford, 1988)

  C. Tyerman, England and the Crusades 1095—1588 (Chicago, 1988)

  INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION

  M. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (London, 2000)

  P. Partner, God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam (London, 1997)

  E. Said, Orientalism (London, 1979)

  E. Siberry, The New Crusaders (Aldershot, 2000)

  CHRONOLOGY

  •

  c.400 Augustine of Hippo outlines a Christian theory of just war

  638 Jerusalem is captured by the Arabs under Caliph Umar

  800 Charlemagne the Frank is crowned Roman Emperor of the West

  9th century Holy wars proclaimed against Muslim invaders of Italy

  11th century Peace and Truce of God movements in parts of France mobilize arms bearers to protect the Church

  1053 Leo IX offers remission of sins to his troops fighting the Normans of southern Italy

  1050s–70s Seljuk Turks invade Near East

  1071 Seljuk Turks defeat Byzantines at Manzikert; they overrun Asia Minor and establish a capital at Nicaea

  1074 Pope Gregory VII proposes a campaign from the west to help Byzantium and liberate the Holy Sepulchre

  1095 Byzantine appeal to Pope Urban II for military aid against the Turks; Urban II’s preaching tour of France (ends 1096); Council of Clermont proclaims Crusade

  1096–99 First Crusade

  1101 onward Smaller crusades to Holy Land

  1104 Acre captured

  1107–08 Crusade of Bohemund of Taranto against Byzantium

  1109 Tripoli captured

  c.1113 Order of the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem recognized; militarized by c.1130

  1114 onward Crusades in Spain

  1120 Order of the Temple founded in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims

  1123 First Lateran Council extends Jerusalem privileges to Spanish Crusades

  1144 Edessa captured by Zengi of Aleppo

  1145–49 Second Crusade

  1149 onward Further crusades in Spain and the Baltic; a few to the Holy Land

  1154 Nur al-Din of Aleppo captures Damascus

  1163–69 Franks of Jerusalem contest control of Egypt

  1169 Saladin succeeds as ruler of Egypt

  1174 Death of Nur al-Din; Saladin begins to unify Syria with Egypt

  1187 Battle of Hattin; Saladin destroys army of Kingdom of Jerusalem; Jerusalem falls to Saladin

  1188–92 Third Crusade

  1193 Saladin dies

  1193–1230 Crusades to Livonia in the Baltic

  1198 Foundation of Teutonic Knights in Acre; Pope Innocent III proclaims Fourth Crusade

  1199 Church taxation instituted for the Crusade; Crusade against Markward of Anweiler in Sicily

  1201–04 Fourth Crusade

  13th century Crusades in the Baltic by Teutonic Knights (Prussia), Sword Brothers (Livonia), Danes (Prussia, Livonia, Estonia), and Swedes (Estonia and Finland); Crusades against German peasants and Bosnians

  1208–29 Albigensian Crusade

  1212 Children’s Crusade; Almohads defeated by Spanish Christian coalition at Las Navas de Tolosa

  1213 Innocent III proclaims Fifth Crusade and extends crusade privileges to those who contribute but do not go on crusade

  1215 Fourth Lateran Council authorizes regular crusade taxation

  1217–29 Fifth Crusade

  1231 onward Crusades against the Byzantines to defend western conquests in Greece

  1239–68 Crusades against Hohenstaufen rulers of Germany and Sicily

  1239–41
Crusades to Holy Land of Theobald, Count of Champagne, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall; crusaders defeated at Gaza (1239)

  1242 Teutonic Knights defeated by Alexander Nevsky at Lake Chud

  1244 Jerusalem lost to Muslims; Louis IX of France takes the cross

  1248–54 First Crusade of Louis IX of France

  1250 Mamluks take rule in Egypt (to 1517)

  1251 First Shepherds’ Crusade

  1260 Mamluks repulse Mongols at Ain Jalut; Baibars becomes sultan of Egypt (to 1277)

  1261 Greeks recover Constantinople

  1267 Louis IX takes cross again

  1268 Fall of Antioch to Baibars of Egypt

  1269 Aragonese Crusade to Holy Land

  1270 Louis IX’s Crusade ends at Tunis, where he dies

  1271–72 Crusade to Holy Land of Lord Edward, later Edward I of England

  1272–91 Small expeditions to Holy Land

  1282–1302 Wars of the Sicilian Vespers; include French crusade to Aragon (1285)

  1289 Fall of Tripoli

  1291 Fall of Acre to al-Ashraf Khalil of Egypt and evacuation of mainland Outremer

  1306–1522 Hospitallers rule island of Rhodes

  1307–14 Trial and suppression of Templars

  14th century Papal crusades in Italy; crusading continues against heretics in Italy; Moors in Spain; pagans in the Baltic (to 1410)

  1309 Popular Crusade; Teutonic Knights move headquarters from Venice to Prussia

  1320 Second Shepherds’ Crusade

  1330s onward Naval leagues against Turks in Aegean

  1350s onward Ottoman Turks established in Balkans; soon establish overlordship over Byzantine emperors

  1365–66 Crusade of Peter of Cyprus; Alexandria sacked (1365)

  1366 Crusade of Count Amadeus of Savoy to Dardanelles

  1383 Crusade of Bishop Despenser of Norwich against supporters of Pope Clement VII in Flanders

  1390 Christian expedition to Mahdia in Tunisia

  1396 Christian expedition against the Ottomans defeated at Nicopolis on the Danube (September)

  15th century Numerous small crusading forays against the Ottomans in eastern Mediterranean and east/central Europe

  1420–71 Crusades against the Hussite heretics in Bohemia

  1444 Crusaders defeated at Varna in Bulgaria (November)

  1453 Fall of Constantinople to Ottoman Turks under Mehmed II

  1456 Belgrade successfully defended from Ottoman Turks with help of crusaders under John of Capistrano

  1460–64 Abortive crusade of Pope Pius II

  1480 Turks besiege Rhodes

  1492 Granada falls to Spanish monarchs

  16th century More crusades against Turks in Mediterranean and central Europe; from 1530s crusades threatened against heretics (Protestants)

  1522 Rhodes falls to Turks

  1525 Secularization of Teutonic Order in Prussia

  1529 Turks besiege Vienna

  1530–1798 Hospitallers rule Malta

  1560s–90s French Wars of Religion; some Catholics receive crusade privileges

  1561–62 Secularization of Teutonic Order in Livonia

  1565 Turks fail to conquer Malta

  1571 Holy League wins a naval battle against the Turks at Lepanto; Cyprus falls to Turks

  1578 King Sebastian of Portugal defeated and killed at Alcazar on crusade in Morocco

  1588 Spanish Armada attracts crusade privileges for Spanish

  1669 Crete falls to Turks

  1683 Turks besiege Vienna

  1684–97 Holy League begins to reconquer Balkans from Turks

  1798 Hospitallers surrender Malta to Napoleon Bonaparte

  1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany visits Jerusalem and Damascus

  1914–18 First World War; Ottoman Turkey allies with Germany which encourages proclamation of jihad against the Turks’ enemies

  1917 British under General Allenby take Jerusalem

  1919 Versailles Peace Treaty negotiations confirm mandates for Britain and France in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and the Lebanon

  1948 Creation of the State of Israel (defended in wars 1948, 1967, 1973)

  1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon

  1990 Gulf War

  2001 Al-Qaeda attack on United States

  2003–04 Iraq War

  PICTURE CREDITS

  •

  ASSOCIATED PRESS: 5: AP Photo/Massimo Sambucetti.

  BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY: 135: Homage to King Philip II (1165–1223) from Simon de Montfort (c.1160–1218) for the territories confiscated from Raymond VI (1197–1249) c.1216 (vellum) by French School (thirteenth century), Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, France/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  CLIPART.COM: 6.

  CORBIS: 12: © The Art Archive/Corbis; 18: © Chris Hellier/Corbis; 110: © Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis; 177: © Swim Ink 2, LLC/Corbis.

  GETTY IMAGES: ii: DEA/G. Dagli Orti/Getty Images; 106: Pietro Cavallini/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images; 170: Sir John Gilbert/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images; 180: The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images.

  THE GRANGER COLLECTION, NEW YORK: 20; 58; 60.

  COURTESY OF PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: 14: LC-USZ62-58246; 44: LC-USZ62-120685; 47: LC-USZ62-36166; 89: LC-USZC4-2149; 95: LC-USZ61-1435; 122: LC-USZ62-120684; 125: LC-USZC4-2148; 131: LC-USZ62-55247; LC-USZ62-88830; 144: LC-USZC4-3484; 157t: LC-USZ61-252; 166: LC-USZ62-114861.

  COURTESY OF PROJECT GUTENBERG: 11: Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, December 19, 1917.

  SHUTTERSTOCK: 36: ©Shutterstock/Paul Cowan; 53: ©Shutterstock/Eduard Cebria; 82: ©Shutterstock/St. Nick; 86: ©Shutterstock/Jozef Sedmak; 101: ©Shutterstock/Eray Haciosmanoglu; 129: ©Shutterstock/Stanislav Bokach; 140: ©Shutterstock/Joshua Haviv; 157b: ©Shutterstock/Elias H. Debbas II; 172: ©Shutterstock/K-i-T.

  COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: xii: Pope Urban/Author: Nelson Minar (http://flickr.com/photos/62218395@N00); 4: Standbeeld Saladin Damascus/Author: Godfried Warreyn; 7: Eugàne Ferdinand Victor Delacroix 047/Source: The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH; 8: Harold bayeux tapestry; 26: Baldwin of Boulogne entering Edessa in Feb 1098/Source: Painting by J. Robert-Fleury, 1840, Les Croisades, origins et consequences; 34: Hattin/Author:Bibliothàque Nationale FR. 5594 Fol. 197, Sebastian Mamerot, Les Passages fait Outremer, vers 1490; 39: Tomb Innocentius III San Giovanni in Laterano 2006-09-07/Author: Jastrow; 51: Martorana RogerII2008/Author: Matthias Süßen; 62: Battle of Varna 1444/Author: Jan Matejko (1838–1893); 64: Sultan Hasan Mosque2/Author: Effeietsanders; 70: Mosque Cordoba/Author: Timor Espallargas; 72: CID-Balboa/Author: Michael Seljos (http://www.flickr.com/people/99149846@N00) from San Diego, California, USA; 76: SiegeOfAcre1291/Source: Chateau de Versailles, reproduced in Brieve histoire des Ordres Religieux, Editions Fragile/Author: D. Papety (1815–1849); 78: Stained glass St Bernard MNMA C13273/Source: Jastrow (2006), Musée national du Moyen Age—Thermes de Hôtel de Cluny, Paris, France; 92: Fra Angelico 031/Source: The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202; 96: Pope Gregory vii illustration/Source: Weltgeschichte-Eine Chronik, ISBN 3-88703-814-2/Upload to commons by RoterRabe 23:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC); 104: Bishop Absalon topples the god Svantevit at Arkona/Source: www.hopegallery.com/php/detail.php?artwork=438/Artist: Laurits Tuxen; 114: RaymondOfPoitiersWelcomingLouisVIIinAntioch/Source: Passages d’Outremer, 14th century/Author: Jean Colombe and Sebastien Marmerot; 120: Saint Pierre l’Ermite Amiens 190908/Author: Vassil; 122: 139: Crécy jean froissard/Source: Chroniques de Jean Froissard/Author: Copiste inconnu; 149: Siege of Tripoli Painting (1289)/Source: Painting reproduced as Plate #26 in Christopher Tyerman’s God’s War. Credited as “British Library, London [Ms Add 27695 Fol. 5]” (Tyerman, p. vii); 154: BaldwinII ceding the Temple of Salomon to Hugues de Payns and Gaudefroy de Saint-Homer/Source: Histoire d’Outre-Mer, Guillaume de Tyr, thirteenth century, reproduced in Les Templiers, Patrick H
uchet, p.21, ISBN 9782737338526; 156: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo-St Jacobus in Budapest/Source: Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts; 162: Braunschweig Brunswick Heinrich der Loewe Heinrichsbrunnen (2005)/Author: Brunswyk; 164: Siegel Grossmeister Deutschritterorden/Source: Buch-Scan von Wolpertinger.