A History of the Crusades
Read A History of the Crusades Online
Authors: Jonathan Riley-Smith
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES
THE EDITOR
J
ONATHAN
R
ILEY
-S
MITH
is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge.
EDITED BY
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford
OX
2 6
DP
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© Oxford University Press 1999
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The text of this volume first published 1995 in
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades
First issued as
The Oxford History of the Crusades
1999
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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ISBN 0–19–285364–3
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by
Cambrian Typesetters, Frimley, Surrey
Printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd
Reading, Berkshire
The inclusion of the subject of the crusades in this series of Oxford histories and the fact that only one of the contributors is from outside Britain provide an opportunity to reflect upon the phenomenal rise in the number of British crusade scholars since the early 1950s, when there cannot have been more than half a dozen, only two of whom were historians, teaching in the universities. By 1990 twenty-nine history departments in British universities and colleges had members of the
Society for theStudy of the Crusades
on their staff. The subject’s strength in British academic circles probably owes most to a general public interest, a fascination with the Near East which has a long history, the reputation of St John Ambulance, which associates itself with the medieval Knights Hospitallers, and the continuing success of Sir Steven Runciman’s
A History of the Crusades
.
This volume reflects the recent developments in crusade historiography which are described in Chapter 1. It covers crusading in many different theatres of war. The concepts of apologists, propagandists, song-writers, and poets, and the perceptions and motives of the crusaders themselves are described, as are the emotional and intellectual reactions of the Muslims to Christian holy war. The institutional developments—legal, financial, and structural—which were necessary to the movement’s survival are analysed. Several chapters are devoted to the western settlements established in the eastern Mediterranean region in the wake of the crusades, to the remarkable art and architecture associated with them, and to the military orders. The subject of the later crusades, including the history of the military orders from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, is given the attention it deserves. And the first steps are taken on to a field that is as yet hardly explored, the survival of the ideas and images of crusading into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH
Croxton, Cambridgeshire
April, 1994
1. The Crusading Movement and Historians
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH
MARCUS BULL
3. The Crusading Movement, 1096–1274
SIMON LLOYD
4. The State of Mind of Crusaders to the East, 1095–1300
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH
MICHAEL ROUTLEDGE
JONATHAN PHILLIPS
7. Art in the Latin East, 1098–1291
JAROSLAV FOLDA
8. Architecture in the Latin East, 1098–1571
DENYS PRINGLE
9. The Military Orders, 1120–1312
ALAN FOREY
10. Islam and the Crusades, 1096–1699
ROBERT IRWIN
11. The Crusading Movement, 1274–1700
NORMAN HOUSLEY
PETER EDBURY
13. The Military Orders, 1312–1798
ANTHONY LUTTRELL
14. Images of the Crusades in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
ELIZABETH SIBERRY
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH
1.
Knight in twelfth-century relief
Abbey of Notre-Dame-de-la-Règle, Limoges. Photothèque du Musée. Photo M. Marcheix
2.
Moissac, south-western France
© Jean Dieuzaide
3.
Drawing from the Luttrell Psalter
British Library [Add Ms 42130 fo. 82]
4.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem: twelfth-century ground plan
Österreichische Nationalbiblothek [NB 24376]
5.
Divine assistance
Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art
6.
Taking the cross
Bibliothèque Municipale de Besançon
7.
Cathedral of Jubayl
A. F. Kersting
8.
Castle of Segura de la Sierra, Andalusia
MAS, Barcelona
9.
Temple church in London
Pitkin Pictorials Ltd.
10.
Illustration from treatise on chess by Alfonso X of Castile
MAS, Barcelona
11.
Contemporary pen drawing of a Hussite wagon fortress
British Library [AC 801/9 TabIV]
12.
Battle of Lepanto, 1571
National Maritime Museum, London [BHC 0261]
13.
Fourteenth-century water mill, Danzig: elevation and plan
Niels von Holst, ‘Der Deutsche Ritterordern und Siene Bauten’, Gebr Mann Verlag, Berlin, 1981
14.
Ruins of castle and octagonal tower, Weissenstein
Bildarchiv Foto Marburg [152.496]
15.
Crusader’s vigil, Lessing
Städesches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main, photo © Ursula Edelmann
16.
Teutonic knights
Ridderlijke Duitsche Orde, Balije van Utrecht, photo by S. J. Ramkers
Map 1.
Europe and the Near East before
c
. 1300
Map 2.
Europe and the Near East after
c
. 1300
Map 3.
The Latin East
Map 4.
The Aegean Region
Map 5.
The Baltic Region
Map 6.
Spain and North Africa
The Crusading Movement and Historians
JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH
In November 1095 a church council was meeting in Clermont under the chairmanship of Pope Urban II. On the 27th, with the council coming to an end, the churchmen, together with some lay people mostly from the countryside around, assembled in a field outside the town and the pope preached them a sermon in which he called on Frankish knights to vow to march to the East with the twin aims of freeing Christians from the yoke of Islamic rule and liberating the tomb of Christ, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from Muslim control. As soon as he had finished Adhémar of Monteil, the bishop of Le Puy who was to be appointed Urban’s representative on the expedition, came forward and was the first to take the cross, while the crowd called out ‘God wills it!’ Although the eyewitness accounts of this assembly and the pope’s sermon were written later and were coloured by the triumph that was to follow, they give the impression of a piece of deliberate theatre—a daring one, given the risk involved in organizing an out-of-doors event at the start of winter—in which the actions of the leading players and the acclamation of the crowd had been worked out in advance.
The crusading movement had begun in the melodramatic fashion which was to be typical of it thereafter. Coming himself from the class he wished to arouse, the pope must have known how to play on the emotions of armsbearers. Now about 60 years old, he had embarked on a year-long journey through
southern and central France. The summoning of an expedition to the aid of the Byzantine empire had probably been in his mind for several years and it had been aired at a council held at Piacenza in March which had heard an appeal from the Byzantine (Greek) emperor Alexius for aid against the Turks, who for over two decades had been sweeping through Asia Minor and had almost reached the Bosphorus. Soon after Urban had entered French territory he must have discussed his plans with Adhémar of Le Puy and with Raymond of St Gilles, the count of Toulouse, whom he wanted as military leader. These meetings cannot have been confidential and there may have been some truth in a tradition in Burgundy that ‘the first vows to go on the way to Jerusalem’ were made at a council of thirty-six bishops which had met at Autun earlier in 1095. Another tradition was that the wandering evangelist Peter the Hermit was already proposing something similar to the crusade before it was preached at Clermont. Peter was congenitally boastful and the stories of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the appeal to him by the patriarch, his vision of Christ, and his interview with the pope in Italy at which he persuaded Urban to summon men to Jerusalem’s aid seem to have originated in Lorraine, not far from the abbey of Neumoustier where he lived once the crusade was over. But at the very least there must have been a lot of talk and some preliminary planning in advance of the pope’s arrival at Clermont.